How RePEc works

May 30, 2020

Many users are unclear how RePEc works and how it differentiates itself from other services. This blog post tries to clarify in a succinct manner.

The core of RePEc is the metadata about the publications. The core is actually completely decentralized, and that metadata is compiled by the respective publishers and made available from their servers. There are currently over 2000 of those so-called RePEc archives. This means that publishers have full responsibility for their contents. The central core of RePEc is in fact just a set pointers indicating the location of the RePEc archives.

All that data is therefore freely available to anyone who wants to use it. Those are RePEc services that assemble all the pieces and make it available in various forms. For example, NEP sends emails about new papers, EconPapers and IDEAS allow to browse or search the data, or CitEc uses the data to try to extract citation data. The latter is an example of a RePEc service that enhances the data and makes it available to other RePEc services. A notable other example is the RePEc Author Service, which allows authors to create a compilation of all their works indexed in RePEc. These profiles are then reused by other services.

For more services using, enhancing, and disseminating the RePEc metadata, see the RePEc homepage. For instructions on how a publisher can contribute, see here. All RePEc services are free.

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in April 2020

May 5, 2020

While most of RePEc is automated, and thus functions the same way whether we are in a pandemic or not, the content and the usage of the services have made noticeable shifts in the past month or two. First in terms of new content, it has slowed down, but with an exponential increase in material relating to Covid-19. As of this writing, there are 779 items relating to Covid-19 in RePEc. Also in terms of usage, it is slightly up compared to March, with an definite focus on Covid-19 related material. See for example, the 25 most downloaded working papers. All in all, we counted 617,754 file downloads and 2,914,152 abstract views.

Related to this, we inaugurated an Economics Virtual Seminar Calendar that is already getting very good usage. We have only two new RePEc archives to announce, though: IJSAB-International and the London Academy of Science and Business. Finally, we still reached a milestone:

800,000 articles with citations

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann