A compendium of RePEc services

March 12, 2013

Since its formal founding 16 years ago, RePEc has grown into a large collection of various services. Users are aware of some, but not all of them. This is an attempt to collect all services that use RePEc data. RePEc is in fact just a way of organizing and collection bibliographic data in economics. Publishers index their works and put it in the public domain through RePEc. Service then use this data in various ways, in part by enhancing it. All linked services are completely free to users and managed by volunteers.

Browsing and searching the database

These are the most basic functions you would want to do with a bibliographic database. Several services provide this. The most popular are IDEAS and EconPapers. Others include Economists Online and Socionet. What distinguishes these services is that they report usage statistics (see below). Yet others that use RePEc include: EconLit, EconStor, Google Scholar, Inomics, Microsoft Academic Search, OAISter/WORLDCAT, Scirus and Sciverse. Shop around and use the one that is the most to your liking!

Curated material

While most the services above provide the complete RePEc bibliographic data, it is the user who has to sift through the material to find what she needs. A few services act as facilitators by helping users with the help of editors who sort and curate the material. NEP disseminates through email and RSS feeds the latest working papers across over 90 fields. The new RePEc Biblio determines the 10-20 most relevant papers in a growing number of fields and sub-fields. EconAcademics.org identifies economic research currently being discussed in blogs.

Specifically for authors

Some services are especially geared towards authors. The RePEc Author Service allows them to create a portfolio of all the works listed in RePEc. Other services then can link from the works to the profiles, and authors can get statistics and new citation notifications. CollEc analyses co-authorship networks and allows, for example, to find how many steps removed from each other any two authors are. The RePEc Genealogy allows to see who graduated where and when and who was the advisor. Finally, the RePEc Plagiarism Committee handles potential plagiarism cases and votes on them, in particular whether to name and shame offending authors.

Statistics

Several RePEc services report traffic on their website, which allows to compute a host of statistics, which are displayed at LogEc. Those, along with citation numbers, allow to compute a large number of rankings of authors, institutions, and papers, including impact factors for serials.

And more

As already mentioned, there is a citation analysis project, CitEc, which uses complex algorithms to extracts references from pdf files and match them with RePEc content.

MyIDEAS allows a user to track other authors, JEL codes, journals or working papers series, as well as build a personal bibliography while browsing on IDEAS. The Socionet Personal Zone also provides some of these functionalities.

EDIRC is a directory of economics institutions with plenty of links to affiliated authors and alumni, as well as compilations of their publications.

Finally, for those authors who do not have the benefit of their local institution participating in RePEc with its publications (see instructions), the Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA) allows them to upload their papers to be included in RePEc.

Leave a Comment » | Bibliographic features in RePEc, RePEc features | Permalink
Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in February 2013

March 4, 2013

Last month, we have introduced yet another RePEc service, the RePEc Biblio. This is a curated bibliography of economics, wherein volunteer editors are incharge of a topic and identify the most important papers. Check it out, and volunteer as well! In other important news, we now have over half a million working papers listed, and we tracked now over 70 million file downloads through participating RePEc services (those that send us such statistics).

We also welcomed the following newly participating archives: Holistic Marketing Management, Fundatia Romana pentru Inteligenta Afacerii, Vilnius University, Universitatea Maritima din Constanta, Phoenix Yayinevi, Universitatea Dimitrie Cantemir, University of Bucharest, Istituto Regionale per la Programmazione Economica della Toscana.

In terms of thresholds we surpassed, we can mention:
70000000 downloads
500000 working papers listed
200000 cited working papers
35000 registered authors

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

The RePEc Biblio

February 25, 2013

We are proud to announce the launch of the latest RePEc initiative, the RePEc Biblio. This is a hand-selected collection of the most relevant articles and papers on a wide variety of economics topics. RePEc Biblio is organized as a tree, narrowing the topics as you follow its branches.

The RePEc Biblio lives from the contributions of volunteer editors. Consider helping out if you have taught a class on a topic and have already put together a literature list. Feel also free to contribute your vision of the best papers from your area of research. Volunteer editors are welcome to sign up to populate the tree, either by contacting the manager or the relevant topic editor who can open a sub-topic or sub-sub-topic. We are looking for editors in both the broadest and narrowest fields. And to encourage good editing, readers can rate the topic entries.

Note that IDEAS links from papers, articles, editor profiles, and JEL codes to the relevant RePEc Biblio topics. Authors also find mention of their papers in RePEc Biblio on their IDEAS citation pages.

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in January 2013

February 4, 2013

We have inaugurated this month MyIDEAS, the personal space on IDEAS that allows a user to follow other authors, series, journals and JEL codes. One can as well build a bibliography and organize it in folders. Find the login at the top of most IDEAS pages or directly here.

We have also welcomed the following institutions with new RePEc archives: Otaru University of Commerce, Romanian Distribution Committee, City University (II), UNDP (II), University of Cambridge (III), Universidad de Oviedo (II), University of Cambridge (II), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ukrainian Journal Ekonomist. Also with the over 1500 participating archives, this pushed us to over 1.2 million research items available on-line. Also, a record 610 people signed up on the RePEc Author Service. We counted 2,235,346 abstract views and 554,912 downloads from the reporting RePEc services over last month.

In terms of thresholds we surpassed, we can report the following:

1200000 items available on-line
800000 listed journal articles
750000 listed on-line journal articles

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

MyIDEAS: your personal space on IDEAS

January 25, 2013

We are proud to introduce an important new feature to the IDEAS website. MyIDEAS is a personal space for the IDEAS user where she can save the papers and articles found on the site and organize them into folders. Think of it like navigating an online store and selecting items for purchase. The difference is that your “cart” is a list of references that you can sort at will into categories you can name.

In addition, MyIDEAS allows you to follow additions to JEL codes, series and journals, as well as what authors may have added to their RePEc profiles.

To use this new service, authentication is necessary, which happens like for others services through an account in the RePEc Author Service, Once cleared, the user finds on all relevant IDEAS pages the option to “add” or “follow” the displayed person or item. This works thanks to a cookie whose sole purpose is to identify the user as he navigates the site. It does, however, not track the user. Contents of the MyIDEAS accounts remain entirely private.

We hope users will find this service useful and welcome comments for improvements or new features.

Update (January 26): Following several requests, two features have been added: one can put annotations on one’s bibliographics listings, and the latter can be exported in various formats.

2 Comments | Bibliographic features in RePEc | Permalink
Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in December 2012, and a look back at 2012

January 2, 2013

Over the past month, we welcomed new archives from the following institutions: Université Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Associazione Studi e Ricerche Interdisciplinari sul Lavoro, Feng Chia University, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez. RePEc services served 2,235,346 abstract views and 554,912 full-text downloads over the course of the month. And we managed to pass the following thresholds:

800000 research items listed in registered author profiles
250000 working papers with extracted references
150000 articles with extracted references
1500 participating archives

A few additional words about 2013. Over the past year, we counted 26,409,738 abstract views and 7,004,655 full-text downloads through RePEc services participating in the bean counting, IDEAS served 11,473,203 unique visitors from 226 countries and territories (including 3 visits from Nauru, 7 from Saint Pierre and Miquelon, but none this year from North Korea, contrarily to previous years). RePEc added 112 new participating archives, 297 working paper series, 180 journals, 53,731 working papers, 113,336 articles, and a total of 163,479 new items available online. 3,769 authors registered, 4,141 NEP reports were issued, references were extracted and matched from 112,389 works. Beyond this, IDEAS and EDIRC went through a redesign, EconAcademics.org was relaunched as a blog aggregator for economics research, the CollEc co-authorship analysis site was opened to the public, new features were added to the RePEc Author Service and CitEc, our citation analysis site, and the RePEc Genealogy was introduced. And there are plenty of plans for 2013!

2 Comments | Workings of RePEc | Permalink
Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in November 2012

December 4, 2012

The number of the month is 50 million. This is the number of downloads that IDEAS has facilitated since inception. And it is the number of abstract views on EconPapers since its creation. These numbers were compiled by LogEc, which weeds out a considerable numbers of illegitimate downloads and abstract views, for example due to duplicates or spiders. For reporting RePEc services, LogEc reported last month 654,809 file downloads and 2,696,554 abstract views.

We have welcomed the following institutions into RePEc: Institutul National de Statistica şi Studii Economice, CEMLA, Società Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, Fucape Business School, Fundatia Amfiteatru, Voice of Research, Université de Franche-Comté, Institut national d’étude démographiques.

All the thresholds that have been reached in the past month are:

50000000 cumulative downloads on IDEAS
50000000 cumulative abstract views on EconPapers
1300000 listed documents
400000 working paper abstracts
400000 items with references
250000 cited articles
6000 listed institutions with a published author
2500 Wikipedia links to research in RePEc

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc at ASSA 2013 in San Diego

November 28, 2012

After three years, RePEc will again be present in the exhibitors hall of the Allied Social Sciences Associations (ASSA) meeting in San Diego 4-6 January 2013. While in Atlanta we had an isolated booth in the back with just a table and some simple printouts as backdrop, this time the booth will be more appealing to visitors. Indeed, RePEc will be part of the double booth of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (booths 315 and 317). The St. Louis Fed is there to promote its publications and its powerful database and graphing facility for economic data, FRED. The RePEc corner will be available to answer questions from users, provide demonstrations of RePEc features and welcome feedback. And there may be a gift for visitors…

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

News about EDIRC, the index of economics institutions

November 21, 2012

EDIRC is an index of economics departments, institutes and research centers created in 1995 that has been feeding RePEc with data about such institutions. But beyond just a listing of institutions, it has evolved into an information source of its own right. Currently, it has the following additional features:


  • Links to journals or working paper series published by the respective institutions and indexed in RePEc.
  • Listings of all people affiliated with the respective institutions and registered with the RePEc Author Service.
  • For these people, a link to a compilation of all their publications.
  • A recent add-on is a listing of all alumni (final degree) as found on the RePEc Genealogy.
  • For the alumni as well, a link to a compilation of their publications.

With close to 13,000 listed institutions, EDIRC has grown a lot since its start. After all those years, the database will now go through some gradual changes, among which are:


  • New categories: the current ones were designed when there were only a few hundred listed institutions.
  • About 12% of the links are known to be invalid. They are currently being systematically checked for better addresses, but this will take several months.
  • Institutions that are known to be defunct and that have no links to people or publications will be removed.
  • When possible, chairs and similar “micro-institutions” will be consolidated. They change too frequently and have become a maintenance burden with no significant benefit. This pertains particularly to Germanic universities.
  • An effort is currently being made to add translations of institution names to English wherever possible. Indeed, it appears that even natives users search for the English name.
  • Speaking of search, the search engine will be improved to make searches more intuitive and efficient than is currently the case.

Of course, any help is always appreciated. In particular, if you notice a bad link, a valid one is always appreciated. And you will be credited along with all the other contributors.

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Posted by Christian Zimmermann

RePEc in October 2012

November 3, 2012

What happened with RePEc last month? First, like every October, institutions are at the Fall peak in producing research, as over 20,000 items have been added to RePEc. Second, our new project, the RePEc Genealogy, is off to a good start, with already over 4000 authors listed. Then, we counted 634,377 downloads and 2,462,684 abstract views through participating services. Finally, we welcomed the following new participating archives: University of Notre Dame, Yonsei University, ZenTra Center for Transnational Studies, Asian Academy of Management, Urban Institute, WWWforEurope, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Università di Napoli “Parthenope”, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, Moscow State University, Shandong University, Regia Naţională a Pădurilor, and Universität Zürich (III)

We reached the following thresholds:
10000000 references extracted
4000000 references matched with material listed in RePEc
2000000 cumulative book abstract views
700000 articles available online
25000 authors linked in CollEc co-authorship network
10% of registered authors listed in RePEc Genealogy

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

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