The RePEc Blog

RePEc went into a slumber for the last month. Quite little to report this time, except for heavy work in the background. The credentials for the accounts in the RePEc Author Service can now be used for authentication into various services, and NEP moved from SUNY Oswego to Penn State. See earlier blog posts about both events. Note also that NEP has now disseminated 200,000 working papers since its inception in 1998.

After adjustments for robots, reloads and other non-conformable traffic, we counted 441,838 file downloads and 1,714,916 abstract views from RePEc Services. Only four new archives joined RePEc: Socionet, Post Keynesian Economics Study Group, Academia Europea de Dirección y Economíe de la Empresa, and Birkbeck College (II). Finally, RePEc passed the following thresholds in the past month:

600,000 paper announcements though NEP (a paper may appear in several reports)
200,000 papers announced through NEP
3,500 working paper series

One project that makes particular strides lately is CitEc, our citation analysis initiative. Thanks to the collaboration of several publishers, references from articles are now being added at a substantial pace, and the citation coverage is now becoming more respectable. There is a lot of material in the pipeline, and we hope that other commercial publishers will join in this effort. Also, NEP is moving to a new location and will be off-line a few days. This blog will report on both over the coming weeks.

We counted 504,492 file downloads and 1,823,518 abstract views in July 2012, as always contingent to the pruning performed by the LogEc project. Our new participating archives for the month of July: Ottawa United Learning Academy, Nottingham Trent University (II), University of Central Florida, Europa Grande, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (II), Vistula University, Universidad de Montevideo, University of Antwerp (II), Mathematica Policy Research, Singapore Management University, Lahore School of Economics, Universidad de Oviedo.

And finally a few thresholds we recently passed:
100000000 article abstract views
12000000 cumulative downloads through EconPapers
1100000 items available online
800000 items with abstracts
750000 links to research in registered author profiles
400000 articles with abstracts
333333 JEL coded items

Authors register with the RePEc Author Service using their email address, which serves as a user name. That email address is also used by the service to alert them about new potential works to add to their profile and to send them monthly statistics. Occasionally, some of these emails bounce back to the service: the mailbox is full, or the address has become obsolete. What happens now?

First, EconPapers and IDEAS add a mention to the author profile page encouraging users to supply a new email address to the RePEc Author Service. IDEAS also publishes the complete list of lost authors.

Second, lost authors are considered without affiliation for ranking purposes. Indeed, a major reason why an email address goes bad is that the author has moved, in which case the affiliation is likely obsolete. Another reason may be that the author has died, in which case having an affiliation make no sense.

Third, once the email address has remained bad for a second month, the administrator of the RePEc Author Service goes fishing for a better one. This involves Internet searches, asking co-authors and former colleagues. This is repeated later if necessary.

These efforts have allowed to keep the number of lost authors remarkably low: currently 273, or 0.8% of all registered authors. To this, add 152 authors who are known to be deceased. The records of the latter continue to be maintained by volunteers, as research may still be added posthumously, or new archives may still join with works written by these scholars.

We appreciate any help in tracing lost authors, notifications about deceased authors and support in maintaining their profiles. Simply email the administrator of the RePEc Author Service.

We counted in the past month 620,959 file downloads and 2,338,668 abstract views. RePEc has also grown to include now over 1.2 million items. This growth comes in part from the following newly participating archives: Lucius & Lucius Verlag, BI Norwegian Business School, Superintendencia de Pensiones de Chile, Rivista Bancaria, Harvard University (II), University of Tokyo (II), Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Université de Liège, Flinders University, Economics for Energy, Central European University, Hellenic Association of Regional Scientists, Southern Regional Science Association.

And last month, we passed the following thresholds:
200000000 cumulative abstract views on IDEAS
8000000 references extracted
1200000 research items listed on RePEc
400000 items with citations
100000 articles with JEL codes
5000 identified links from blog posts to research items on RePEc
2000 links from Wikipedia to research items on RePEc

The innovation of the month is the complete overhaul of EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for economics research. It now monitors a much longer list of blogs and selects the blog posts that discuss research. Also, IDEAS now links back from the abstract and author pages to the posts.

We counted 634,507 file downloads and 2,319,912 abstract views during last month and welcomed the following new participating RePEc archives: Kasetsart University, Review of Agrarian Studies, Brigham Young University, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Bahcesehir University, JICA Research Institute, La Trobe University (II), Western Risk and Insurance Association, IGI Global, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, Universitatea Andrei Saguna, Scientific Society of Management from Romania, Duke University (II), and Università di Trieste.

Finally, we passed the following thresholds:
3000000 matched citations
2500000 cumulative downloads through NEP
2000000 cumulative abstract views for book chapters
700000 listed articles

The big news this month is the launch of a new RePEc service, CollEc, which analyzes co-authorship networks within RePEc. Data from CollEc is now also integrated in author rankings. Furthermore, IDEAS now links back to any Wikipedia article mentioning a RePEc page (details). And the RePEc home page was redesigned. Watch this space, more initiatives are on the way.

We counted 684,729 file downloads and 2,385,381 abstract views through reporting RePEc services. We also welcomed the following new participating RePEc archives: Cornell University (II), Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI), ISTIEE, Universidade de Vigo, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, and Okan Üniversitesi.

Finally, we passed the following thresholds:
150000000 cumulative working paper abstract views
300000 JEL coded items
40000 registered people

The big news this month are the release of an upgrade of the RePEc Author Service and the new layouts of IDEAS and EDIRC. We hope this will improve the satisfaction of our many users, who were responsible for 642,216 file downloads and 2,276,448 abstract views. This leads us to the next big news: since the start, a quarter billion abstract views have been counted by the statistics-reporting RePEc services.

We also want to welcome the following new participating archives: International School for Social and Business Studies (Slovenia), University of Warwick (III), Università di Roma La Sapienza (IX), University of Toronto (III), Copernicus University in Torun (Poland), Columbia University (II), Banco Central de la Republica Argentina, Auckland University of Technology, Université d’Aix-Marseille, and St. Olaf College.

Finally, we have reached the following thresholds, and the list is long:
250000000 cumulative abstract views
25000000 cumulative article downloads
7500000 references extracted from documents
3000000 references matched with documents in RePEc
750000 item abstracts
250000 JEL coded items
200000 JEL coded papers
70000 NEP subscriptions
12500 listed institutions
10000 book abstracts
1400 participating archives