The RePEc blog

Previous discussion on this blog (1, 2) covered the issue of peer review of new research, in particular now that the Internet has become such a predominant medium of communication. One way in which peer-reviewing could work is through blogs, wherein in a blogger discusses a paper and lets others comments on the paper (and the discussion).

Currently little of this is happening in Economics, as blog are much more focussed on discussing current events and each other. To promote the more academic blogs, and to encourage others to open such academic blogs, I just created the Econ Academics Blog, which aggregates those blogs that fit somewhat these criteria at this point. The Econ Academics Blog does not have blog discussions about research, but rather links to them. I hope people will find it useful as a portal and use it on a regular basis to find interesting discussions of academic nature, and that more appropriate blogs will be created.

NEP (New Economics Papers) is an email service that alerts subscribers to new online working papers in their area of interest. About 80 fields are currently available, and the roughly weekly emails are sent free of charge. While the RePEc team thought email dissemination was sufficient, there also appears to be demand for RSS feeds as for this and other blogs. This is now available, and the RSS feeds can be subscribed to by clicking on the relevant field report on the NEP home page.

This new feature was added in typical RePEc fashion: David Hugh-Jones inquired with Marco Novarese why there was no RSS feed, Thomas Krichel encouraged David to set it up, and two days later, it was up.

If you think new features should be added to RePEc, we always welcome suggestions, especially if you are willing to do it yourself… much like many of the available NEP editors have been volunteers who just wanted a particular field to be covered.

While the Summer is usually calm, RePEc has just passed some historic benchmarks in terms of content and traffic: 750 journals listed, 2000 working paper series, half a million works available online, 20 million working paper downloads recorded, 200,000 works that are cited within RePEc. This all reflects the tremendous growth that RePEc continues to enjoy.

New contributors to RePEc during the month on July were: University of Petrosani, University of Sussex, University of Trento, Hanseatic University, Institute of National Economy (Romania), University of Wisconsin Press, TOBB University of Economics, Asociación Española de Contabilidad y Administración de Empresas, European Commission (DG Taxation), and University of Chile.

This month’s traffic numbers were 595,349 file downloads and 2,407,502 abstract views for those RePEc services that provide statistics: EconPapers, IDEAS, NEP and Socionet. These numbers are filtered for multiple downloads, robots and other “unusual” behavior.

Finally, let’s see all the thresholds that have been beaten, an impressive list for a single month:
20,000,000 cumulative working paper downloads
2,000,000 cumulative software component abstract views
500,000 works available online
500,000 cumulative chapter abstract views
333,333 works listed in registered author profiles
200,000 works with citations
125,000 article abstracts
125,000 JEL coded items
17,000 registered authors
2,000 working paper series
1,250 books listed
1,000 books available online
750 journals

Two RePEc services, EconPapers and LogEc, are down since late Saturday or early Sunday. This post will provide updates on the situation.

EconPapers provides a browsable and searchable database of bibliographic entries from RePEc. IDEAS provides a similar service and can be used in the meanwhile. LogEc provides usage statistics for the listed works. The statistics will not be affected due to the downtime.

Update (Tuesday): Both services are running again, on a different machine. The same URLs are valid, but DNS servers will take a little while to understand the change of location.

Update (Friday): Both services are now running again on the original machine, which suffered a power supply problem.

There are many ways to rank researchers, but rarely has one been adopted as fast as the h-index. It has been introduced by physicist Jorge E. Hirsch in August 2005, and is defined by h, with h works from an author having at least h citations. Compared to “raw” citation counts, which may put too much emphasis on a few much cited works, it highlights the trade-off between quantity and quality of research. Of course, like any research ranking criterion, it is imperfect in many ways and controversial to all but those who rank well. But it allows to highlight some aspects of research productivity.

RePEc has reported rankings according to the h-index since October 2005 for authors. There is also a variant for institutions and regions, where h is defined as the number authors with an h-index of at least h. Due to the large number of ties, how far an institution is from reaching the next h is also taken into account.

Quite naturally, the h-index can also be defined for journals and series. Starting this month, RePEc publishes such h-indexes: journals, working paper series (preprints), and all series combined. Obviously, journals and series with longer publishing histories are favored, and we hope this will have the side-effect of publishers making sure to have a complete listing on RePEc.

By the way, the overall h-index for all of RePEc is at 225 as of today.

Addendum (August 3): For authors, there is now also a Wu-index. This has been proposed by Qiang Wu and is defined in a similar way to the h-index, except that one needs 10 citations per paper. Due to the very large number of ties and zeros, this criterion is, however, not integrated in the overall rankings.

As highlighted in a recent post, we encourage deep linking in RePEc services. This is particularly useful for reading lists and syllabi. In fact, IDEAS provides simple tools to create such lists on its web site.

The first one allows to create reading lists by providing code that is similar to HTML and includes handles of items listed in RePEc. Each of these items is then automatically matched with other versions, thus allowing to find a free version of a password protected article, or find the latest version of a working paper as published in a journal. Different layouts are possible: one for a course syllabus, one for reading lists.

The second one allows to create a list of publications from a set of authors registered on RePEc. Existing examples include ex-pats from some countries, graduates from programs, winners of prizes, etc. Note that such lists are automatically computed for members of research units or departments. See listing on EDIRC. For other lists, this tools comes handy.

June was a surpisingly busy month, especially in terms of content expansion. We have now reached 600,000 works listed on RePEc, and it took only 10 months to add the last 100,000. Traffic was also heavy for the season, reaching 584,843 downloads and 2,803,705 abstract views.

The following institutions joined RePEc with an archive: World Scientific Publishing, Queens College (CUNY), GEFRA, Kobe University, Institut für Angewandte Wirtschaftsforschung (IAW), Université d’Auvergne, Universtät Freiburg, Società Italiana degli Economisti. Finally, here are the thresholds we reached this month:

140,000,000 cumulative abstract views
100,000,000 cumulative abstract views on IDEAS
45,000,000 cumulative abstract views for articles
600,000 listed works
350,000 articles listed
300,000 online articles listed
240,000 working papers listed
180,000 working paper abstracts
150,000 items with references
120,000 article abstracts
20,000 NEP reports

Hotlinking is the practice of linking to a web page deep in a web site, instead of its front page. This practice is discouraged by many news sites, both because they prefer users to browse through the site and because links may become obsolete.

At RePEc, we actually encourage hotlinking. Links in RePEc services are designed to stay current (in principle). Also, instead of linking to a PDF file on a researcher’s web page, which may disappear, abstract pages on EconPapers or IDEAS are much more stable. In addition, these abstract pages may provide links to other versions of the paper. This proves particularly useful if the user does not have access to a password protected article from a commercial publisher, or if the user wishes to know whether the paper has been published. Other links on the abstract page can also be valuable, like those to author profiles, references, citations and related works. Finally, authors always appreciate when paper downloads are counted towards their statistics. Indeed, RePEc can only monitor traffic routed through its services.

Therefore, we encourage hotlinks to RePEc services on blogs, online syllabi, personal web pages, online bibliographies, etc.

Women have always been underrepresented in Economics. For example, regarding US faculty, the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), a subcommittee of the American Economic Association, determines in its latest annual report that women represent 28% of assistant professors, 21% of associate professors and 8% of full professors in PhD granting Economics department. As a whole, they represent 19% of all Economics faculty.

The point of this post is not to complain about the low proportion of women in the profession, or about their dwindling share up the ladder, but about the lack of involvement on women in RePEc. Currently, their share is at 14.5%. It is clearly below the 19% mentioned, although it is slowly increasing (it was 13.6% a year ago and 12.7% two years ago). Why this underrepresentation?

It is of course possible that their a bias in those numbers, because the CSWEP numbers pertain only to the United States and the RePEc Author Service covers the whole world. So, let us analyze the top 1000 economists from Tom Coupé’s list. Of the men, only 22.9% are not registered taking the ranking by publications, and 32.4% with the ranking by citations (which includes quite a few non-economists). For women, the numbers are 37.2% and 44.4%. We see that top female economists are less likely to be signed up with RePEc.

Therefore, encourage women to register at the RePEc Author Service!

PS: You may wonder how these numbers are determined, as gender is not indicated when registering with the RePEc Author Service. It is inferred from first names, using a database of gender likelihood by name. For the more uncertain cases, an exception table was created using additional information, in particular from pictures on personal web pages.

Many authors may have rejoiced about the increase in their citation counts in their last monthly notification. At least part of this increase is due to an error that crept in while fixing a citation display issue for authors on IDEAS. This error is now fixed and next month’s mailing will show a substantial decrease in citation counts for some. While I got no complaints this time, I expect some in a few weeks…

In some cases, counts will be even lower than before the error crept in. This is because now extra care is taken not to double count citations to and from different versions of the same works. As always, self-citations are not counted in totals but still displayed on IDEAS.

Traffic on RePEc services continues to be high, establishing a record for the third month in a row for abstracts. But tis streak is expected to come to an end, as Summer traffic is typically lower. All in all, we counted 693,457 file downloads and 2,836,840 abstract views.

During the month of May, the following institutions joined RePEc with new archives:
University of Hamburg, Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, CIDE, University College Dublin, Nanyang Technological University, Romanian Journal of Regional Science, University of Central Missouri, University of Luxembourg, Queensland University of Technology.

In terms of thresholds passed, you should notice a few very significant ones:
90,000,000 cumulative abstract views for working papers
20,000,000 cumulative downloads through IDEAS
1,000,000 cumulative downloads through NEP
300,000 abstracts available
180,000 working papers available online
120,000 JEL coded items

Economic Analysis and Policy (EAP) is a 38 year old journal published by the Economic Society of Australia (Queensland branch) that has just adopted an open access policy. To celebrate this important step, EAP intends to publish in 2009 a special issue on the Economics of publishing, with special reference to different business models, like the commercial, university press, open access and pre-print models. Academic publishing is undergoing a profound transformation that we wish to better understand.

EAP particularly seeks to publish passionate, critical, and controversial articles. It is open to orthodox but also unorthodox approaches.

We expect to publish 5 to 8 articles. They will be peer-reviewed under the guest editorship of Christian Zimmermann (University of Connecticut). Please submit your manuscript in PDF format through the journal’s online submission.

A typical situation: An author registered on the RePEc Author Service has a working paper, listed on RePEc in his profile, that got published in a journal. Now that the publisher has provided the bibliographic information about this article to RePEc, the author can add it to his profile. What should he do about the working paper?

In an overwhelming majority of cases, the answer is: nothing! Indeed, most publishers accept that pre-prints, even post-prints, remain on authors´ home pages or institution repositories (what department working paper series are, for example). In case of doubt, see the SHERPA/RoMEO list. Thus, the author should not ask the paper to be removed from wherever it was put up.

Note: removing a paper from an author profile does not remove it from the database. It only makes the system learn that the author is not the author of this particular work. The consequences can be very annoying. For example, it becomes impossible for RePEc to recognize that these are two versions (pre-print and published) of the same work, as they appear to have different authors. Then, someone stumbling on the working paper will not find a link to the published version.

For authors caring about their ranking, there are even more adverse consequences from removing the working paper from the author profile. First, many working paper series have higher impact factors that journals. Second, the authors loose the download statistics of the working paper. Remember, working papers are much more downloaded than articles. And if the article is available only to subscribers, non-subscribers do not have the option of accessing the free working paper version.

And if it is really required that the working paper be removed, ask the RePEc series maintainer to only remove the link to the full text, not the whole record.

RePEc is just a way to organize bibliographic data. A RePEc service uses that data and makes it usable to the public. As the data is in the public domain, anybody can start such a service and make RePEc even more useful. Here is a list of known RePEc services, listed in alphabetical order.

CitEc

CitEc performs citations analysis on works listed in RePEc and returns citation data to RePEc services. CitEc is managed by Jose Manuel Barrueco Cruz and is hosted by the Technical University of Valencia, Spain.

EconLit

EconLit is a bibliographic database sold by the American Economics Association. It also display select working papers series from RePEc. In exchange, Econlit provides some bibliographic metadata to RePEc and support in encouraging more working paper series to be listed in RePEc.

EconPapers

EconPapers displays all the data collected in RePEc, including author information and links to references. The site can be browsed by series, journals, authors and fields. EconPapers also provides various checks to others services and to archive maintainers (metadata syntax, URL checks, linking different versions of the same work). EconPapers is maintained by Sune Karlsson and hosted by the University of Orebrö, Sweden.

IDEAS

IDEAS displays all the data collected in RePEc, including authors information, references, citations, and rankings. The site can be browsed by series, journals, authors, fields, and institutions, or searched. IDEAS is maintained by Christian Zimmermann and hosted at the University of Connecticut, USA.

Inomics

Inomics is a website that was created by the late Thorsten Wichmann. One feature of Inomics is displaying RePEc data. While the rest on the site is continually maintained by Berlecon staff, the RePEc part still runs unmodified after many years. Inomics is based in Berlin, Germany.

LogEc

LogEc performs statistical analysis for downloads and abstract views on select RePEc services (i.e., those that make the effort to provide relevant data): EconPapers, IDEAS, NEP and Socionet. The results can be called in all sorts of ways. LogEc is maintained by Sune Karlsson and hosted by the University of Orebrö, Sweden.

NEP

NEP (New Economics Papers) disseminates new working papers through field specific email lists. At this writing, 83 mailing lists are available, and they typically send a message once a week. To be listed, a working paper needs to be recent, available online, and selected by an editor aided by an expert system. Subscriptions are free. NEP is lead by Marco Novarese, maintained by Thomas Krichel and hosted by SUNY-Oswego, USA.

RePEc Author Service

The RePEc Author Service allow authors to compile all their works listed in RePEc into one folder. Along with contact information and affiliations, the collected data can then be used by other RePEc services, to enrich the displayed data, generate cross-links or compute rankings. The RePEc Author Service is maintained by Christian Zimmermann and hosted by the University of Connecticut, USA.

Socionet

Socionet is a website in Russian that serves a lot of information about research in social sciences, including RePEc data. It also includes RePEc data in Cyrillic that other services typically do not display. Socionet is maintained by Sergei Parinov and Viktor Lyapounov and hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk.

Others

RePEc data is also disseminated through an OAI-PMH portal (OAI=Open Archives Initiative) where it is picked up by numerous other services, including OAIster, Google Scholar and Yahoo Search.

As expected RePEc beat traffic records in the past months, with both EconPapers and IDEAS posting records. Over all services, LogEc recorded 749,918 file downloads and 2,815,159 abstract views.

In other news, the RePEc Input Service was inaugurated a few days ago. We also experienced some email trouble as our email server was subject to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. While the attack is still going on, we have found efficient was to deal with it. Finally, the following institutions joined RePEc with new archives: Academy of Economic Studies (Bucharest), Academia Romana, University of Strathclyde, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Wolters Kluwer Health, Robert Schumann Centre, Institute of Development Studies (Brighton), Lebanese Economic Association, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the EC (IAAEG).

And now the various thresholds we passed last month, with plenty of important ones this time:
30,000,000 cumulated downloads
10,000,000 article downloads
700,000 monthly downloads
475,000 online items
175,000 paper abstracts
100,000 papers announced through NEP
16,000 registered authors
2,000 online chapters
1,600 software components