Grey matters: Ensuring management information is a part of the permanent evidence base by creating open grey literature principles

Ecological research has transformed over the past 20 years, striving to be more equitable and adhering to the principles of open and transparent science (Hampton et al., 2015). This transformation has substantially changed how academic ecologists carry out and communicate research. However, ecological practitioners have not been fully included in these priority shifts (Hampton et al., 2013). There are a multitude of reasons for this, including that practitioners are generally less involved in the open dissemination of their science and practice, systemic barriers exist that limit the ability of practitioners to participate in or get credit for their contributions to research and information generation (Cole, 2020), limited access to research publication funds, limited time, restrictions on accessing published literature, language barriers, necessarily prioritising local deliverables, and fewer incentives to embrace the open data and communication revolutions. Further, articles and data are professional currency for academic researchers, whereas practitioners more often prioritise effective solutions. These limitations are further exacerbated in lower-GDP countries where researchers might struggle to pay for access to journals with paywalls or cover publication costs in open access journals (Nabyonga-Orem et al., 2020; Receveur et al., 2024) and face discrimination against languages other than English (Nuñez et al., 2019).