Grey literature aggregation: Toby Green on Policy Commons

Policy Commons is on a mission to make grey literature - especially in the form of reports, more discoverable and accessible. Its content platform, Coherent Digital, hosts over 12 million documents - and the number is growing rapidly.

Who better to discuss this massive initiative than Toby Green, Founder and Publisher of Policy Commons? In this episode, Toby explains what Policy Commons is, what it exists for, where it's going next, and, crucially, the benefits that it provides to stakeholders - notably publishers, librarians, and readers.

In the process, Toby provides an expert perspective on several themes concerning grey literature in general. They include the definition and characterisation of grey literature, questions of scope and scale, and the need to make digital publications sustainable (notably through persistent identifiers).
 

Links

• Policy Commons website: https://policycommons.net/
• Our episode with John Barbrook: Decolonising the library and grey literature

Further listening

We hope you found this episode rewarding. If so, you might find the following of particular interest:

• David Baxter on effective grey literature: the case of reports on gambling
• Sponsored reports: David Baxter on the interface between research and policy
• Innovation in grey literature dissemination: Cora Cole on GreyLit

Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra