RePEc and OLS Thomas Krichel prepared for the first retreat for disciplinary repositories Monterey 2009-10-19.

RePEc and OLS

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

prepared for the first retreat for disciplinary repositoriesMonterey 2009-10-19

Introduction

I am here representing two activites RePEc Open Library Society (OLS)

ariw AuthorClaim RePEc

RePEc is more established. OLS may become an umbrella organiztation

for RePEc.

origin of RePEc

Basically it was built over time by Thomas Krichel, in the hope (later the conviction) that it would be useful.

When Thomas Krichel started it, he had no data no computer on which to store data no money

RePEc is still an “informal” activity, but it's informal model is showing some strains.

RePEc pre-history

goes back to a gopher, then web site that I started in 1993 called NetEc.

Among others NetEc had BibEc: a bibliography of printed paper WoPEc: a collection of eletronic working papers or

links to them.

objectives

Early objectives are make as many possible of papers available freely

online organize a free metadata set for the discipline

The basic arguments behind the idea that both are realistic has been discussed elsewhere.

RePEc's original principle

The original principle was (is?) Many archives One database Many services

Today the database is not only composed by the archives but the services also contribute to it.

Archives feed a database, the database feed services and the service feed the database.

many archives

There are close to 1100 RePEc archives. Data is stored in attribute: value templates. Each archive requires

one archive template one or more series template

An archive may have document templates. All templates use a purpose-built format called

ReDIF, designed by Thomas Krichel.

origin of archives

Christopher F. Baum administers the setup of archives.

The bulk of archives are based with economics departments. They maintained by faculty or staff.

Some archives contain converted data from major providers such as commercial publishers, larger organizations such as the US Federal Reserve, and RePEc's own personal submission service, the MPRA.

collection of data

A special central archive collects all archive templates.

A purpose-written Perl script called remi, written and maintained by Sune Karlsson, builds the basic documents database from all archives.

This data is also available via ftp somewhere.

the document dataset

At this time, we have the following metadata 310,000 working papers 475,000 journal articles 1,800 software components 16,800 book and chapter listings

It is hard to say that RePEc is a subject repository.

RePEc and IRs

In principle, RePEc appears like some sort of precursor to institutional repositories (IRs) before they started.

I doubt IRs can be called a success. But RePEc is still expanding. The priniciple difference is that RePEc has a

better service infrastructure than IRs have. It is also important that the services feed back

to the dataset.

important services EconPapers and IDEAS are web services CitEc forms citation data OAI PMH service NEP is a current awareness service MPRA allows individual to submit papers EDIRC has institutional data RePEc Author Service (RAS) is an author

identification service LogEc has usage statistics the humble service

CitEc

CitEc is an autonomous citation index for RePEc created and maintained by Jose Manuel Barrueco Cruz.

Results of the citation analysis used to be encoded in ReDIF, and made available in RePEc itself.

They are encoded in AMF (an XML format), and distributed separetely.

OAI-PHM gateway

It is maintained by Thomas Krichel. It offers a OAI-PMH interface to the boring part of RePEc.

It uses the AMF format, a format encoded in XML that is is similar to ReDIF.

There is a also the compulory OAI-DC format, but it is empty for some instances in the RePEc dataset.

NEP NEP: New Economics Papers is a current

awareness service for a part of the documents, the working papers.

It was created by and is maintained technically by Thomas Krichel.

All additions are filtered into 80 subject-specific reports that issue every week.

Computer learning helps editors, otherwise it would be too much work.

NEP creates a subject classification for parts of RePEc.

MPRA

In the early days the RePEc team allowed individuals to open personal archives.

We found out this was a bad idea. In 2005 Ekkehard Schlicht created the Munich

Personal RePEc Archive, an EPrints installation.

It was the first time that an institution officially committed to maintaining a part of the RePEc infrastructure (other than an archive).

EDIRC

EDIRC is the “Economics Departments, Institutions and Research Centers” list compiled by Christian Zimmermann.

It's a set of data and a service of the data. The data is redistributed in ReDIF form in a

special RePEc archive.

RePEc Author Service

This is where authors register themselves can claim associations between them and the documents.

The most frequent association type is authorship, hence the name.

RAS was created by Thomas Krichel. It is maintained by Christian Zimmermann. Most of the code was written by Ivan V. Kurmanov. The

The data is distributed in a special RePEc archive.

LogEc

LogEc is the king of RePEc user services. It compiles data on

abstract views full-text downloads

from participating services (EconPapers, IDEAS, NEP) and others.

the humble service

This service is so humble that it does not have a name.

Every month Christian Zimmermann sends out mails to all registered authors and all archive maintainers. He reports on the usage of items in RePEc as captured by LogEc.

ranking

Christian Zimmermann compiles rankings using the combination of RePEc, NEP, EDIRC, CitEc and LogEc data, at http://ideas.repec.org/top/

This shows you what RePEc is all about: a cross-penetration of data.

notable absences

RePEc has no organizational structure. It is not owned by anybody. It has no income or expenditure. While much of its revolutionary ideas have been

conceived by Thomas Krichel, it pretty much can live without him now.

assessment of RePEc

It not easy to assess RePEc against its original objectives.

Numerators are easy to evaluate, denominators are not.

The problem is the lack of good useable data about the denominator.

one good denominator

There is a list of 1000 most important ecenomists in the word by Tom Coupe.

It is over 10 years old Christian Zimmermann has matched names of

the Coupe list with RAS registrants. He found that more than 80% of the Copue's top 1000 are RAS registrants.

We can not reach 100%.

perception and communication RePEc is something of a nature that has not

been there before. It is not that hard to understand the nature of

the data and services that it provides. It is hard to understand how the thing works, or

what it actually is. It is probably the thing out there in digital library

land that is closesed to a miracle. Miracle are hard to explain eveny for miracle

makers.

lessons learnt

Performance metrics are crucial to bring in target community members into an academic publishing and documentation system.

We need a way to identify the units assessed authors institutions

We also need a some agreement about, and exchange data of, usage incidents.

author and institution registration

a&ir is an important enabling device. Registration sets up a factual claim that is

relavitively simple to check. Setting up a free system that enables free a&ir,

and redistributes the data freely is currently Thomas Krichel's main concern.

open library society

This is a 503 1 c charity set up by Thomas Krichel to support the work on the registration systems.

The purposes of the society are formulated quite generally. The society can support related purposes.

In the next few weeks a formal alignment between RePEc and the society may becoming along such as to enable a legal representation, or at least support, through the society.