Education Commons^™

Where Is The Evidence? Realising The Value Of Grey Literature For Public Policy & Practice: A Discussion Paper, Amanda Lawrence, John Houghton, Julian Thomas, Paul R. Weldon

Dr Paul Weldon

The internet has profoundly changed how we produce, use and collect research and information for public policy and practice, with grey literature playing an increasingly important role. The authors argue that grey literature (i.e. material produced and published by organisations without recourse to the commercial or scholarly publishing industry) is a key part of the evidence produced and used for public policy and practice. Through surveys of users, producing organisations and collecting services a detailed picture is provided of the importance and economic value of grey literature. However, finding and accessing policy information is a time-consuming task made harder by …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

On December 3, 2013, when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores, the ranking of the United States as number 27 on the global scoreboard elicited little surprise among teachers, educational professionals, academics, and educational policymakers. The usual platitudes were trotted out—no mention that the United States’ standing was getting any worse, just which other countries were passing us by. We were stuck at a perennial average.

The results are in a sense a metaphor of the slow decline of the United State since the 1970s from a position of …