GnomeKing Wrote:a deeply unappetising grey literature porridge, sitting heavily for many hours, hard to digest, and sapped of intellectual nutrients.
I find that the underlying systemic fault of a lot of grey literature is due to the heavily structured format in which we are expected to write our reports rather than what we are actually writing about. At the level of most grey literature (eval reports) we are obviously required to not over-egg our puddings and to write in simple clear terms so that someone else (curator) can make decisions based on the evidence. The evidence needs to be stated in a clear and succinct manner. An eval report is not a phd thesis and so will not be as full of 'intellectual nutrients'. It will be full of demonstrable evidence though I hope. We write grey literature to the level that is required by the evidence we have found, and in the format required by the curatorial system we work in.
You could of course take exactly the same findings and, freed from the limitations of the curatorial 'system', write an academically peer-reviewed fantastically interesting account of multi-period settlement and trade etc etc etc. But it would likely be just that: fantastical.