Gray Literature in Engineering

According to the Luxembourg Definition from the Third International Grey Literature Conference in 1997 and amended in 2004, gray literature is defined as:

information produced on all levels of government, academia, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body

Gray literature often contains unique information not found in other published sources. This information can be incredibly detailed and extensive, and not beholden to space constraints imposed by traditional scholarly publishing. Relatedly, information disseminated in GL formats may be published on an accelerated timeline relative to scholarly works, for which the peer review process can take quite a bit of time.

In the case of preprint articles, access to the public can happen in a matter of hours.