“The paper contributes to the discussion on the place of grey literature in institutional repositories and, vice versa, on the relevance of open archives for grey literature. Even in an open environment, grey literature needs specific attention and curation. Institutional repositories don’t automatically provide a solution to all problems of grey literature.
Our paper shows some scenarios of what could or should be done. The focus is on academic libraries. The paper is based on a review of international studies on grey literature in open archives. Empirical evidence is drawn from an audit of the French repository IRIS from the University of Lille 1 and from ongoing work on the development of this site.
The study includes a strategic analysis in a SWOT format with four scenarios. Based on this analysis, the paper provides a set of minimum requirements for grey items in institutional repositories concerning metadata, selection procedure, quality, collection management and deposit policy.
The communication is meant to be helpful for the further development of institutional repositories and for special acquisition and deposit policies of academic libraries.”