RePEc Author Service now 20,000 strong

April 30, 2009

Authors can register on the RePEc Author Service to create an online profile of their works and obtain monthly various statistics and newly found citations for their works. This service was introduced in its current form in 2004, and has just seen the 20,000th author register (in addition to over 6000 non-authors). While RePEc and the RePEc Author Service are not formally associations, we can still claim to be larger than the largest of all societies in Economics, the American Economic Association having about 18,000 members.

We are frequently asked how much of the profession we cover. This is very difficult to determine. Using the method discussed when we reached 15,000 authors, we can only say that we have currently a coverage between 41% and 80% of the profession.

Note that the RePEc Author Service is only a data collection service, as it obtains data from authors about what they wrote (among items listed in RePEc), their contact details and their affiliations. It solicits also help from them in identifying some citations. It is then the job of other services to do something with the collected data. Thus EconPapers and IDEAS display author profiles, EDIRC lists authors by affiliation, LogEc displays their download statistics and CitEc uses the collected citation data. In addition, rankings of authors and institutions can be computed.

Leave a Comment » | Use of RePEc data, Workings of RePEc | Permalink
Posted by Christian Zimmermann

The Economics of Open Access Publishing

April 24, 2009

Open Access Publishing is the free distribution of research, whether it is as a pre-print (working paper) or a peer-reviewed article. Since the creation of the web, more and more journal are choosing open access as their business model. One of them was recently Economic Analysis and Policy, published by the Economic Society of Australia (Queensland). To celebrate this, EAP has just published a special issue dedicated to the Economics of Open Access Publishing. Articles are written by economists discussing their experience with open access as well as by others involved in open access publishing. They cover the transition the publishing industry is currently undergoing, the surprisingly low cost of publishing an open access journal, the impact of open access and various open source aspects of the open access.

2 Comments | Dissemination of research in Economics, Open Archives | Permalink
Posted by Christian Zimmermann

Tips for authors to improve their RePEc ranking

April 16, 2009

By far the most popular topic on this blog is material about rankings. People love to know who the best are and how they fare. This post is about optimizing one’s ranking within RePEc, and doing so in a way that does not trigger our safeguards against cheating. It turns out all the following points are points we actually want to encourage anyway so as to improve the quality of the data collected in RePEc.

As an author, here is what you can do once you logged into the RePEc Author Service:


  1. Make sure all your works listed in RePEc are actually in your profile. Thus, do not remove from your profile working papers that have been published. Some working paper series have higher impact factors than many journals, and working papers are much more downloaded than articles. In addition, if all versions are in your profile, we can link between them. (If you previously refused items that were yours, you can recuperate them by clicking on the “refused” tab in your research page, unrefuse the relevant items, and then redo the search)
  2. Make sure the name variations listed in your profile really encompass all possible ways a publisher may have listed your name. The automatic search is only going to find works with such names.
  3. There may be additional citations waiting for your approval. These are those for which we have less confidence that they pertain to the right work. Click on the “citation” tab in your author account.
  4. Link to your profile on EconPapers or IDEAS from your homepage or email signature.
  5. When refering to your works on a web page, put the link to EconPapers or IDEAS. We cannot count downloads that do not transit through RePEc services.
  6. Make sure all your works are listed on RePEc. For the missing ones, encourage the publisher to list them, or get your department to open a working paper series, or upload your works on the Munich Personal RePEc Archive.

As an institution, you can optimize your ranking by making sure your registered authors follow the advice from above and:

  1. Make sure everyone is registered and maintains his/her profile.
  2. Make sure everyone gives the proper affiliation. You can check who is listed with you by finding your institution on EDIRC.
  3. Have your working paper series listed on RePEc. Instructions are here.

If everyone optimizes like this, RePEc data will be more complete, current and useful. Help us make it better!

Leave a Comment » | RePEc rankings | Permalink
Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in March 2009

April 5, 2009

The big news this month is that RePEc has reached 1000 participating archives. This was achieved with an almost record crop in new archives, 16: Center for Industrial Studies Milano, INESC Porto, El Trimestre Económico, Netherlands Competition Authority, Asia-Pacific Policy Center, Villanova University, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Economic Publishing House, Romanian-American University, Lille Graduate School of Management, Yildiz Technical University, GWS Institute of Economic Structures Research, Bogazici University, Agricultural University of Athens, Kyushu Sangyo University, Portuguese Journal of Management Studies. In addition, over 2500 working paper series are now listed.

A new ranking has been published, one for young economists. And in terms of traffic, March was as busy as ever with 846,487 file downloads and 3,202,521 abstract views.

Other thresholds we passed in the past month:
120,000,000 cumulative abstracts views on IDEAS
350,000 new paper announcements disseminated through NEP
240,000 cited items

Leave a Comment » | Workings of RePEc | Permalink
Posted by Christian Zimmermann