Scientific information, much of which is published as grey literature, can play a pivotal role in the search for solutions to global problems. Diversity invigorates problem solving and science benefits from a community that approaches problems in a variety of creative ways. Despite their diversity, the hundreds of authors and researchers across the globe involved in grey literature can be seen as part of the same community contributing to the scientific enterprise in valuable ways.

Diversity speaks directly to the effectiveness of information professionals working together as a team and is an essential ingredient for innovation. People from different backgrounds bring with them new information. If you want to build teams, communities, and organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. It enhances creativity and encourages the search for new information and nuanced perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies as well as organizations, because exposure to it changes the way one thinks. A diverse community of researchers anticipate differences and understand that they will have to work harder to achieve consensus, but their diligence can lead to better outcomes. Authors in the GL-Conference Series come from different societal cultures and geographic regions; however in their research, they are united by the culture of science, which is without borders. This diverse community has over the past two decades applied research methods and offered explanations that have helped this field of information through blind spots, shedding light on what were once seen only as inherent problems. Their evidence based approaches have opened up new areas of research in grey literature. Where in the early ‘90s the focus was primarily on the demand side of grey literature, equal emphasis today is directed to its supply side. Speed and scale of communication are significant factors that contribute to diversity. The proliferation of technologies has allowed for an exponential growth of knowledge in information science just as in other sciences. However, the diverseness of grey literature resources has become a major challenge to its exploitation. The availability of systems for collecting and aggregating data and its semantic analysis has now become a priority.

GL18 will focus on evidence and will seek to further raise awareness among the wider public to the strength of grey literature based on a shared commitment by a diverse community of authors and researchers responsible for its production and open access. GL18 welcomes information professionals in government and non-government, in academics,  business and industry to engage in this year’s international forum by responding to the Call for Papers.