Study on the availability of UK academic "grey literature" to UK SMEs: Report to the JISC Scholarly Communications Group

This report documents the findings from a small study on the availability of academic grey literature to SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) in the UK. SMEs do require access to grey literature of various types and would welcome the chance to use reports, survey results, theses and datasets that universities could provide. The problem is discoverability. SMEs turn to trade or professional bodies for this sort of information as a rule, or search the Web, and do not think of the higher education community as a possible source. The visibility of university-produced grey literature is very poor. Universities must make clear what they have on offer and manage the dissemination of it better if it is to be of help to the SME community. The Web provides the tools for this task. The other main finding is that some SMEs – and not just research-based ones – do need to use the published journal literature on occasions. They find this difficult because of subscription barriers and because only limited access is available through their local university (if at all)