RePEc’s mission is to democratize the dissemination of research in economics. This means that everyone should be able to identify research of interest and find ways to access it. This also means that every economist should have ways to make access to their research available. RePEc is working towards this mission with the help of an army of volunteers. The idea is that the economics community is better served by itself than by outsiders. Volunteers can be very involved, such as running websites, or less, such as contributions data as much as they can.
RePEc can always use more volunteers. The main benefit is the satisfaction of contributing to a public good. Also, for many of those who have a service component to their job (in addition to, say, teaching and research), helping RePEc can be more productive than sitting on some committee…
What opportunities are there? RePEc offer a variety of services and web sites (detailed here) that can use help. Usually, some programming knowledge is required. Ideas are also much welcome. A team of core volunteers is welcoming any help. It is best to contact the maintainer of the relevant service to see if one’s profile is suitable.
Another major area of work is being editor for a NEP report, if you see a vacancy or feel your field is not covered yet, contact the general editor to propose your services. Note that being NEP editor provides the added benefit of name recognition among the peers in your field.
Most RePEc volunteers provide data in one way or another. An important one is maintaining a so-called RePEc archive that hosts the data about publications. This can be for a journal, a working paper series, or a collection of series. There are over 2000 RePEc archives at this time. Instructions to open a new RePEc are here.
Other ways to contribute data are: adding references for paper where the reference extraction failed; correcting broken links in EDIRC, the directory of economic institutions; adding information about alumni and their advisors in the RePEc Genealogy; curating lists of the most important papers in a specific area and sub-areas in the RePEc Biblio; contributing to the Economics Virtual Seminar Calendar; maintaining the profiles of deceased economists. Or simply by providing suggestions for improvements, new features or new services.
RePEc is built by the community for the community. Be part of it.
Posted by Christian Zimmermann 
The RePEc Blog 