Legal Aspects of Grey Literature

The paper provides insight into legal issues of grey literature. Based on a short overview of recent studies on grey literature and intellectual property, it suggests a typology of copyright protection for grey literature, in particular for PhD and Master's theses, reports, conference papers, working papers, datasets and preprints. New trends in copyright and scientific communication are mentioned in so far as grey literature is concerned: digital rights, creative commons, institutional repositories and mass digitization. The paper reflects also on the way legal issues impact the definition of grey literature.