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Why gray literature?
Gray literature includes reviews, explanations, white papers, general discussions, and mental meanderings that provide context and clarity to research.
The best gray literature is
- written (or produced, if we’re talking audiovisual or pure audio content) by the relevant researcher, or ghostwritten for and with the oversight of the researcher,
- created with a target audience in mind that is not expert, but also not stupid (and thus not treated as such.)
Gray literature has a lot of advantages: amongst them, putting the researcher on the proverbial map and connecting the researcher to what s/he(y) is doing and why, alerting funders and potential partners to a researcher’s work, and, of course ‘communicating science’ or disseminating information that is useful to humanity at large (we’re hoping) in a way that makes the information accessible and relevant to the humanity’s daily life (that is, highlights why we should care about the research…and its funding.)
But gray literature takes time and effort, and it is not necessarily peer-reviewed (aka ‘good for the career.’)
In fact, academic peers can sometimes get a bit testy when a fellow researcher takes time to ‘dumb down’ important research for the ‘vanillas,’ ‘the normals’ or the ‘muggles’ or however you nerds want to refer to those of…
