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: [email protected] Author-Name: Paul Levine Author-Email: [email protected] 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: [email protected]: 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: [email protected]: (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