Grey Literature in Japanese Academia—Efforts by the National Diet Library to Acquire and Provide Access to the Journals and Conference Proceedings of Academic Societies and Associations

The ongoing trend of digitization, open access, and open government has improved availability and accessibility to many documents that until now had been regarded as grey literature. This does not mean, however, that grey literature no longer exists nor that there are not new problems to solve in the digital era. This paper describes the results of a questionnaire survey conducted by the National Diet Library (NDL) of Japan, in which some 2,000 academic societies and associations in Japan responded to questions about the publication, digitization, and distribution of their journals, conference proceedings, and other materials. The survey found that some materials are still difficult to locate and access, that they are not fully under national bibliographic control, and that long-term access to such documents is not assured, because they are not deposited to the national library. This paper also describes current trends in academic publishing in Japan, the NDL’s efforts to acquire and provide access to these publications, some of the challenges that are likely to be faced in the future.