“A Science Portal of Technical Papers” is the subtitle for the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information resource, GrayLit Network. Its search engine is powered by Explorit, a search engine created by Deep Web Technologies, LLC, a private company that creates search engines for government databases and private firms.
GrayLit Network is a gateway to government literature that is not published through normal channels, thus the name “gray literature”. The GrayLit Network itself gleans its definition of grey/gray literature from the US Interagency Gray Literature Working Group, Gray Information Functional Plan, 18 January 1995, which states that grey literature is “foreign or domestic open source material that usually is available through specialized channels and may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic control or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents”. An older and more succinct definition is provided by Hesselager (1984) who defines it as “non‐conventional or informally published literature”. This article refers to a more thorough and detailed explanation by Posnett and Baulkwill (1982).
GrayLit Network contains links to documents from five different federal government servers: the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Technical Reports Collection (now available through DTIC's Scientific and Technical Information Network (STINET)); the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information's (OSTI) Information Bridge; the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Environmental Publications Information System (NEPIS); the National Aeronautic and Space Administration's (NASA) Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) Technical Reports Server (JLPTRS); and NASA's Langley Technical Reports Server (LTRS). GrayLit contains scientific and technical reports in PDF, HTML and/or Postscript formats.
This gateway provides access for hard to find government technical publications produced in the period 1951 to the present. All data in GrayLit is available free of charge – with one exception. The DTIC's Scientific and Technical Information Network requires that persons accessing their site be registered users. The general public is directed to the National Technical Information Center (NTIS), which charges a modest fee for downloading the desired PDF document.
To access the material found through GrayLit, the user simply selects the Search the Literature option and then chooses which databases are to be searched (DTIC, DOE, NASA‐JPL, NASA Langley, and/or NEPIS). The search terms are entered in a field immediately below the gateway choices. If the user wants to limit the number of document records to retrieve, this option can be set so that GrayLit retrieves from ten to 250 document records. Clicking on Help takes the user to a simple help page that outlines on a one‐page information sheet on the best way to search the gateway and contains notes regarding Boolean searching. It would be very helpful if GrayLit created the same kind of tutorials offered by Science.gov (RR 2005/158) and TOXNET (RR 2005/209).
When searching for relevant document hits, the system lets the user know how long it expects the search to take and gives a progress report on how many databases have been searched. A list of ranked links can be generated in 30 seconds or it may take as long as two minutes. When complete, results are ranked according to a star rating system that places the most relevant documents at the top and the least relevant at the bottom of the search results list. As stated earlier, GrayLit uses a search engine known as Explorit created by Deep Space Technologies, LLC. Explorit allows the user to see their search results by ranked relevancy or by source. Across the top of the results list and the document abstract title pages are a series of buttons which allow the user to move Up or Down in the list, Mark all important documents, List Marked documents only, Clear all marks for documents and a contextual Help screen.
To access any of the documents found in the list, the user needs only to click on the desired title link. This link takes the user to a title page where the document is available. Document access through the various gateways is different depending on which gateway is being used. To access any specific documents or reports found by GrayLit, the user may click on the Adobe Acrobat icon. Depending on the speed of the server accessed, it can take from 30 seconds to two minutes for the documents to appear in the reader. If the user wishes to print or download the document, the print or download buttons provided on the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader must be used. However, this is not always the case. It must be remembered that any documents provided by the DTIC gateway from STINET are not available to the general public. The user is given the option of obtaining a PDF, paper, or microfiche copy of the document by linking to the NTIS web site and ordering the document from there. With the DOE Information Bridge, if users cannot access the document directly, they are directed to a page that states that if they wish to download the document instead, they must right click on the PDF icon and choose either Save Link As or Save Target As. The user is also given the option of obtaining a paper or microfiche copy by linking to the NTIS web site and ordering the document.
As I stated in my review of Science.gov, considering the size of the files and, more importantly, the variable speed of the internet at various times of the day, documents I requested came back in what I considered to be a timely fashion. Those who need quick and repeated access to a specific report or group of reports should download them onto their machines or onto an available portable medium such as a Zip, memory stick, or a writable CD or DVD.
Like Science.gov, GrayLit does not use a breadcrumb index to let users go to previous pages. GrayLit has links to all of its various pages provided along the left hand side of the page. The exception to this is when a user his entered a particular gateway, such as the DOE Information Bridge, to access a particular document. To get back to GrayLit from one of the various gateways, one must remember to use Back to return to the GrayLit database.
GrayLit bills itself “a Science Portal of Technical Papers” but one should also keep in mind the notice that GrayLit provides in the introductory information: “Since GrayLit Network search utilizes the capability of each individual site search, results may vary”. This is a very true statement when it comes to accessing the actual documents found by GrayLit. You may be able to get ready access to the document and then again, you may have to go to NTIS to purchase a copy of the publication. However, that being said, for finding elusive grey literature, no other government or free resource can match GrayLit. As with all databases and gateways available through the internet it is probably smarter to bookmark, or even better save, the document when it is found. Like Science.gov, which is invaluable for locating current research and development information, GrayLit is invaluable for locating hard‐to‐find technical reports.
