RePEc: An Open Library for Economics Thomas Krichel Work partly supported by the Joint Information Systems Committee of.

RePEc: An Open Library for Economics

Thomas Krichelhttp://openlib.org/home/krichel

Work partly supported by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK Higher Education Founding Councils

Bringing scholarly communication in Economics kicking and screaming into the Internet age: NetEc, RePEc and

more to come

Thomas Krichelhttp://openlib.org/home/krichel

work partly sponsored by the Joint Information Systems Committee through its Electronic Libraries Programme

Electronic scholarly communication• A substantial part of the Summer School has

been concerned with the implication of securing access to toll-gated resources at a time when the toll seems to be ever increasing.

• The bulk of the problem are the serials• Death spiral of serials

– Dividends must rise– Sales stagnates– Publishers sell less at higher prices

Faustian grip

• Authors write papers for free• Authors review papers for free• All high-reputation channels are controlled by

toll-gating publishers• Libraries are paying a rent to the publishers• Commercial publishers have a grip on academia• Krichel knows the way out

Reforming scholarly communication

• Scholarly communication is about– dissemination– quality certification

• splitting both is a key part in reform• set up alternative dissemination channels

Scholarly dissemination

• Toll-gated papers are not in the authors’ interest. • Toll-gated papers are not in the readers’ interest.• Need to get authors and readers closer

together, cut out the middle (wo)man. • Authors and readers form a discipline, thus a

discipline-based approach is needed (cf Stern)

Scholarly communication in Economics

• Economics is highly peer-reviewed with long delays

• Need for informal dissemination channels• Working Paper tradition• Initial motivation of RePEc is to organize working

paper dissemination of the Internet.

RePEc Past & Present

• February 1993: Krichel puts first electronic research paper in Economics on a gopher server as part of the NetEc project

• May 1997: RePEc was founded• Now: RePEc largest distributed library of free

scientific documents on this planet• No current funding • Spanking new homepage http://www.repec.org

RePEc searches a middle way..

• arXiv.org– centralised– high requirements on contributors

• web– decentralised– low requirements on contributors

... via a three-layer model

• Many archives • One database • Many services

– many user interfaces – providers of archives offer their data to all interfaces

at the same time.

RePEc is based on many archives

• WoPEc• EconWPA• DEGREE• S-WoPEc• NBER• CEPR

• US Fed in Print• IMF• OECD• MIT• University of Surrey• CO PAH

RePEc is used in many services

• BibEc and WoPEc• Decomate Z39.50 service• NEP: New Economics Papers• Inomics

• IDEAS• RuPEc• EDIRC• HoPEc

… describes documentsTemplate-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0Title: Dynamic Aspect of Growth and Fiscal PolicyAuthor-Name: Thomas Krichel Author-Person: RePEc:per:1965-06-

05:thomas_krichelAuthor-Email: T.Krichel@surrey.ac.uk Author-Name: Paul Levine Author-Email: P.Levine@surrey.ac.uk Author-WorkPlace-Name: University of SurreyClassification-JEL: C61; E21; E23; E62; O41 File-URL: ftp://www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/

pub/RePEc/sur/surrec/surrec9601.pdf File-Format: application/pdfCreation-Date: 199603 Revision-Date: 199711 Handle: RePEc:sur:surrec:9601

… describes persons (HoPEc)Template-Type: ReDIF-Person 1.0 Name-Full: KRICHEL, THOMAS Name-First: THOMAS Name-Last: KRICHEL Postal: 1 Martyr Court 10 Martyr Road Guildford GU1 4LF EnglandEmail: t.krichel@surrey.ac.ukHomepage: http://gretel.econ.surrey.ac.ukWorkplace-Institution: RePEc:edi:desurukAuthor-Paper: RePEc:sur:surrec:9801Author-Paper: RePEc:sur:surrec:9601Author-Paper: RePEc:rpc:rdfdoc:conceptsAuthor-Paper: RePEc:rpc:rdfdoc:ReDIFHandle: RePEc:per:1965-06-05:THOMAS_KRICHEL

… describes institutions (EDIRC)

Template-Type: ReDIF-Institution 1.0 Primary-Name: University of SurreyPrimary-Location: GuildfordSecondary-Name: Department of EconomicsSecondary-Phone: (01483) 259380Secondary-Email: economics@surrey.ac.ukSecondary-Fax: (01483) 259548Secondary-Postal: Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XHSecondary-Homepage: http://www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/Handle: RePEc:edi:desuruk

The RePEc vision• It is a collaborative effort of community wide

knowledge sharing by discipline champions, publishers and librarians.

• Once a critical mass of data and user services is reached outsiders face strong incentives to contribute.

• The relational features allow to share the burden of cataloguing and reduce the cost of keeping the collection up-to-date.

RePEc is an Open Library

• Distinction between provision and implementation of data since 1997

• Open for provision and open for use• Methods and software are reusable in other

disciplines because all disciplines have some form of free channel

• Librarypower is required to catalogue the web papers

What about peer review

• Most documents in RePEc have some form of peer-review before appearing there

• Publishers do not peer review, the management function that they subsidize could easily be done by academics

• It is possible to absorb the costs of running journals into general university costs

WebScreen

• Project for Yarus• middle way between full formal and informal

peer-review• Authors submit RePEc free papers to a channel• Have to review somebody else’s paper before

your own paper may be reviewed• WebScreen list papers as long as they are free

Conclusion: four wishes from the library community

• Lobby against copyright transfers• Lobby for open system (JSTOR)• Support the chaotic movement towards web

publication• Learn from the Open Source community to build

open libraries

Live happily thereafter !

Amen