500,000 journal articles listed on RePEc

February 25, 2010

The number of articles indexed on RePEc has recently surpassed half a million, with 88% linked to an online version. All these articles have been published in over 1000 journals listed on RePEc.

Journal articles now comprise the majority of the research material on RePEc, but this has not always been so. In fact, in the early days of RePEc, working papers (pre-prints) constituted the vast majority. But as commercial publishers started noticing how popular RePEc and its services were becoming, they wanted to be listed as well. They made the effort of converting their meta-data to our format and make it available at no charge. A few years back, this would have been unimaginable. Little by little, all major publishers opened RePEc archives. Nowadays, it is small independent publishers who join, along with various open access journals that look for free and efficient dissemination of their content through RePEc.

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

About author rights

February 17, 2010

Authors are always very happy when their paper is accepted for publication in a journal, as this shows that their work was deemed important but editors and referees. But they also want to make sure that their work gets read and does not disappear behind a subscription wall. There are several steps an author can take here.

Retain copyright

The author is the copyright holder until this is transfered to someone else. Publishers asks very soon after a paper is accepted for publication that the copyright be transfered to them. Typically, the form asks for all rights, which implies that the author cannot use her own work in other publication or in presentations, even in her own classroom. There are two ways to avoid this: 1) ask for the “other” copyright form, which publishers provides upon request only. This form allows the author to retain certain rights. 2) amend the copyright form. SPARC has developed a standard form that is available here [pdf]. See further details regarding this procedure.

Keep pre-prints online

In many cases, a paper was previously made available online as a working paper. Do not remove it. Indeed, you are the copyright holder and do not have to relinquish this. Even if you did not follow the steps above, in most cases, you can still keep your working paper online. Many publishers have made public that they tolerate, to various degrees, that these pre-prints remain in place. You can check this at SHERPA/RoMEO.

Provide post-prints

You can even archive so-called post-prints. These are accepted versions on your article. Many universities and research funders actually require that post-prints be publicly archived, for example in an institutional repository. In Economics, it is also common to publish an accepted work in a working paper series. Again, to see what publishers officially allow in this respect, see SHERPA/RoMEO. You have more rights, of course, if you took steps to retain them.

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

Volunteer appreciation: Venus Khim-Sen Liew

February 10, 2010

RePEc works thanks to a large number of volunteers, most of them toiling in anonymity. One who spends a lot of time on the project is Venus Khim-Sen Liew, currently Associate Professor of Economics at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak in Malaysia. Among many other professional responsibilities, he is editor at MPRA, the RePEc service that allows authors to upload their works to be indexed on RePEc, for those who do not benefit from a local RePEc archive. MPRA needs editors to ensure some quality control to make sure that submissions are of academic nature and satisfy copyright requirements. Venus is in charge of submissions in Malaya and in particular helps with those in English, of which a considerable number (over 9000) have been accepted so far, and much of it is the result of Venus’ work.

If you are interested in helping with RePEc as well, check out the volunteer opportunities.

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in January 2010

February 3, 2010

The big news for RePEc this month is the inauguration of a new RePEc service, EconomistsOnline, provided by Nereus who also contributes a major new archive of working papers to RePEc.

In terms of traffic, we counted 760,521 file downloads and 2,629,780 abstract views during the month. RePEc has welcomed 9 new archives: CASE (Poland), Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, NEREUS, Universidade de Concepción, RSconsult, FrancoAngeli Editore, INFER, Agency for Economic Analysis and Forecasting (Bulgaria), Technological Educational Institute of Kavala

And finally, the thresholds reached during the month:

120,000,000 cumulated working paper abstract views
850,000 items listed
400,000 working paper announcements sent through NEP
333,333 working papers listed
275,000 working papers online
250,000 working paper abstracts
120,000 working papers with citations
4,000 series and journals listed

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann