Ekkehart Schlicht has very recently earned his retirement as a Professor of Economics at the University of Munich and we hope he will remain active for many years in the RePEc community.
Prof. Schlicht has been a pioneer of sorts. While editor of the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft), he convinced his publisher to put the journal on RePEc, the first German journal to do so. And when he heard that EconWPA had to stop accepting new paper uploads, he stepped up and got the Library of the University of Munich to provide software, space and hosting for the Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA). This allows authors whose home institution is not (yet) participating in RePEc to upload their works and make them available through RePEc. This service has proven to be wildly popular, with over 13000 uploads in its first four years of service, is now the second most popular series or journal on RePEc in terms of downloads. In fact, MPRA is so popular now that its volunteer editors could indeed use some additional help, in particular for submissions in English.
Prof. Schlicht has also occasionally been contributing to this blog, in particular about the future of the publishing industry. This reminds us that this week is Open Access week, so do not forget to promote Open Access around you for a better accessibility of research. In particular, open a local RePEc archive, or upload your works to MPRA!
And we all wish a happy retirement to Prof. Schlicht, and we hope to continue reading from him on this blog and the internal RePEc mailing lists.
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