Grey Literature

Unpublished reports, often referred to as ‘grey literature’, detail the results of fieldwork and research. Since there is usually a considerable time-lag between fieldwork and/or research being undertaken and the results of significant projects being published, HERs are an important source of information.

Grey literature forms the basis of what we know about individual heritage assets and can lead to changing interpretations as more work is done on a specific site. It is used to contextualise known sites and monuments within wider patterns of investigation and discovery. It is also used to identify areas for new fieldwork, to fill in apparent 'blanks' in the distribution of monuments, to inform new understanding, or to suggest investigative techniques that may yield good results.

It is best practice for HERs to adopt workflows that minimise, and where possible eliminate, double-handling of grey literature. HERs should consider whether they can justify the requirement for and retention of hard-copy grey literature, particularly as a hard copy report should be included in the full site archive.

HERs should also consider how and whether they need to store digital material, and whether the use of DOIs linking to Trusted Digital Repositories, such as the ADS, might help to reduce the digital storage burden for their host organisation. This approach ensures that there is a single definitive archived version of each grey literature report, to which everyone is directed, whether they are accessing this from the HER, from the ADS user interface or through any other means such as search engines. The reduction of an HER’s physical and/or digital storage requirements has a positive impact on an HER’s carbon footprint and should be considered best practice.

Grey literature may be shared digitally with HERs in England and Scotland via OASIS, though the ways in which individual HERs interact with OASIS vary considerably. Welsh HERs have established a methodology to share grey literature with OASIS but do not receive any information from it. Instead, Welsh HERs have produced guidance for the submission of data (including grey literature) to HERs.