RePEc: a public-access database that
promotes scholarly communication
in Economics
Thomas Krichel
2006-03-21
free pizza & free libraries
Thomas Krichel
2006-03-21
who is he?
he is "St. IGNUicus"
• A humoristic creation of Richard M.
Stallman (RMS)
• RMS is the father of the free software
movement
– a geek
– a visionary
• St. IGNUicus shows an emphasis on the
moral case for free software, rather than
the business case
free software vs free pizza
• Free in free software is does not mean
zero dollar, like in free pizza.
• Instead it refers to free as in freedom.
• Richard says that free software comes
with four freedoms.
• He developed a license that protects these
freedoms, known as the GNU public
license.
4 freedoms of free software
• The freedom to run the software, for any
purpose.
• The freedom to study how the program
works, and adapt it to your needs
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you
can help your neighbor
• The freedom to improve the program, and
release your improvements to the public,
so that the whole community benefits
moral case and business case
• Other folks in the free software movement
avoid the "f" word
– free can mean cheap
– cheap can mean bad
• They stress the business case of free
software
• They use the term "open source software",
(OSS)
RMS and us
• Amen, I tell you: we librarians need to
learn more from the OSS movement.
• We need to make the concepts coming of
free software more a part of our business.
• Let us look at a key concept: free
software.
what has this to do with us?
• Just replace free software with free
information. Libraries are about free
information.
• But the analogy is not quite as simple.
– When we talk about free information, we
usually mean things that we can freely read
(download…). free as in: $0
– We do not usually mean free information as
information we are free to do things with. Free
as in freedom.
moral and business
• There is a moral case for free information.
Librarians rely on it.
• There is a business case for free
information. Librarians need to make their
own.
from moral case to business case
• To form the business case for free
information, think of "free information" as
"freedom to do things" rather than $0.
• Thus libraries can make a crucial business
case for them as agents who transform
information.
• Recall that there are whole industries out
there that produces free information.
Open libraries and scholarly
communication
• RePEc is an example for an Open Library.
• An Open Library is loosely defined an
application of the OSS principles to
libraries.
– vague
– in the making
– but has some history
• Looking at RePEc will fix ideas.
scholarly communication
• Is mainly about scholars communicating
– between themselves
– to students, occasionally
• Thus it is essentially a community activity.
• Traditionally, there have been two
intermediaries acting as external agents.
– libraries
– publishers
when tradition ends
• Two external shock
– There comes the Internet and reduces
distribution costs to zero
– There comes computer technology and
reduces storage costs somewhat
• “opportunity sets” of community members
and external agents increases
• Proposition: the future depends much on
what the community members decide.
External agents have little impact.
discipline communities
• Scholars of various disciplines have
varying habits of research, publication,
and evaluation
• It is likely that the Internet will emphasize
those differences rather than reducing
them.
examples: disciplines with
established informal publishing
• Preprint communities
– Physics  arxiv.org
– Mathematics  arxiv.org, partially
• Working paper communities
– Computer Science  CiteSeer
(working paper disappearing)
– Economics  RePEc
change is tough
• Change has to come inside the discipline.
• There has to come a pioneering individual
who
– is technically well versed
– is managerially smart
– has extraordinary forward thinking
– is willing to take considerable risk with her
career
• Ginsparg, Krichel, Giles & Lawrence are
rare
RePEc History
• It started with me as a research assistant
an in the Economics Department of
Loughborough University of Technology in
1990.
• a predecessor of the Internet allowed me
to download free software without effort
• but academic papers had to be gathered
in a painful way
CoREJ
• published by HMSO
– Photocopied lists of contents tables recently
published economics journal received at the
Department of Trade and Industry
– Typed list of the recently received working
papers received by the University of Warwick
library
• The latter was the more interesting.
working papers
• early accounts of research findings
• published by economics departments
– in universities
– in research centers
– in some government offices
– in multinational administrations
• disseminated through exchange
agreements
• important because of 4 year publishing
delay
1991-1992
• I planned to circulate the Warwick working
paper list over listserv lists
• I argued it would be good for them
– increase incentives to contribute
– increase revenue for ILL
• After many trials, Warwick refused.
• During the end of that time, I was offered a
lectureship, and decided to get working on
my own collection.
1993: BibEc and WoPEc
• Fethy Mili of Université de Montréal had a
good collection of papers and gave me his
data.
• I put his bibliographic data on a gopher
and called the service "BibEc"
• I also gathered the first ever online
electronic working papers on a gopher and
called the service "WoPEc".
NetEc consortium
•
•
•
•
•
•
BibEc
WoPEc
CodEc
WebEc
JokEc
HoPEc
printed papers
electronic papers
software
web resource listings
jokes
a lot of Ec!
WoPEc to RePEc
• WoPEc was a catalog record collection
• WoPEc remained largest web access
point
• but getting contributions was tough
• In 1996 I wrote basic architecture for
RePEc.
– ReDIF
– Guildford Protocol
1997: RePEc principle
• Many archives
– archives offer metadata about digital objects (mainly
working papers)
• One database
– The data from all archives forms one single logical
database despite the fact that it is held on different
servers.
• Many services
– users can access the data through many interfaces.
– providers of archives offer their data to all interfaces
at the same time. This provides for an optimal
distribution.
RePEc is based on 560+
archives
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
WoPEc
EconWPA
DEGREE
S-WoPEc
NBER
CEPR
Blackwell
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
US Fed in Print
IMF
OECD
MIT
University of Surrey
CO PAH
Elsevier
to form a 362k item dataset
171,000
187,000
1,300
2,100
9,000
working papers
journal articles
software components
book and chapter listings
author contact and publication
listings
9,300 institutional contact listings
RePEc is used in many services
•
•
•
•
BibEc and WoPEc
Decomate Z39.50 service
EconPapers
NEP: New Economics
Papers
• Inomics
• RePEc author service
•
•
•
•
IDEAS
RuPEc
EDIRC
LogEc
… describes documents
Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: Dynamic Aspect of Growth and Fiscal Policy
Author-Name: Thomas Krichel
Author-Person: RePEc:per:1965-0605:thomas_krichel
Author-Email: T.Krichel@surrey.ac.uk
Author-Name: Paul Levine
Author-Email: P.Levine@surrey.ac.uk
Author-WorkPlace-Name: University of Surrey
Classification-JEL: C61; E21; E23; E62; O41
File-URL: ftp://www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/
pub/RePEc/sur/surrec/surrec9601.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Creation-Date: 199603
Revision-Date: 199711
Handle: RePEc:sur:surrec:9601
… describes persons (HoPEc)
template-type: ReDIF-Person 1.0
name-full: MANKIW, N. GREGORY
name-last: MANKIW
name-first: N. GREGORY
handle: RePEc:per:1984-06-16:N__GREGORY_MANKIW
email: ngmankiw@harvard.edu
homepage:http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/
mankiw/mankiw.html
workplace-institution: RePEc:edi:deharus
workplace-institution: RePEc:edi:nberrus
Author-Article: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:76:y:1986:i:4:p:676-91
Author-Article: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:77:y:1987:i:3:p:358-74
Author-Article: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:78:y:1988:i:2:p:173-77
….
… describes institutions
Template-Type: ReDIF-Institution 1.0
Primary-Name: University of Surrey
Primary-Location: Guildford
Secondary-Name: Department of Economics
Secondary-Phone: (01483) 259380
Secondary-Email: economics@surrey.ac.uk
Secondary-Fax: (01483) 259548
Secondary-Postal: Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH
Secondary-Homepage:
http://www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/
Handle: RePEc:edi:desuruk
what do open libraries do?
•
•
•
•
Identify records
Relate identified records
These actions require human control.
They prepare for assessment of
performance.
key to success
• Have a small group of volunteers
• Disseminate as widely as possible
• Demonstrate to authors and institutions
that it works for them.
– institutional registration
– author registration
institutional registration
• It started by one sad geezer making a list
of departments that have a web site.
• I persuaded him that his data would be
more widely used if integrated into the
RePEc database.
• Now he is a happy geezer and one of our
three crucial volunteers.
RePEc author service
• RePEc document data has author names
as strings.
• The authors register with RAS to list
contact details and identify the papers they
wrote.
• This is classic access control, but done by
the authors.
author registration
• It started when funding allowed us to hire
a crazy programmer to write an author
registration system.
• The system went online as "HoPEc" in late
2000.
• It has been renamed "RePEc author
service" (RAS)
• A recent grant from OSI allows for a
rewrite and expansion.
LogEc
• It is a service by Sune Karlsson that tracks
usage of items in the RePEc database
– abstract views
– downloads
• There is mail that is sent by Christian
Zimmermann to
– archive maintainers
– RAS registrants
that contains a monthly usage summary.
authors' incentives
• Authors perceive the registration as a way
to achieve common advertising for their
papers.
• Author records are used to aggregate
usage logs across RePEc user services
for all papers of an author.
• Stimulates a "I am bigger than you are"
mentality. Size matters!
recently
• In 2004, Peter Jasco compared RePEc
services with the EconLit proprietary
professional database.
– IDEAS and LogEc were Peter’s pick
– EconLit was Peter’s pan.
• He slammed the working paper coverage
of EconLit.
• He could have slammed other things.
RePEc / EconLit partnership
• RePEc now delivers all its working paper
data to EconLit, without getting the journal
data of EconLit in return.
• This may seem absolutely perverse! A
bunch of volunteers laboring for a multimillion $$$ concern!
• In fact it serves RePEc well because it
adds officialdom.
summary: keys to success
• Have a small group of volunteers
• Disseminate as widely as possible
• Demonstrate to authors and institutions
that it works for them.
– institutional registration
– author registration
KEY idea 1
• RePEc attracts a community of users and
contributors
• The community itself is the focus of
attention
• RePEc describes the living rather than the
dead.
• Forget about documents!
KEY idea 2
•
•
•
•
Forget about users!
Disseminate widely
Users will come through Google anyway.
And Google loves RePEc services
– puts RePEc services top when the query
consists of the name of an author
obstacles to open libraries
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lack of imagination & entrepreneurship
inability to form alliances
user-centered thinking
document-centered thinking
technical competence required
– OAI PMH
– XML and XML Schema
– Unicode
• the "C" word
what I do for open libraries
• Create an open library for library science:
the rclis (reckless) dataset.
• Create a supporting organization:
the open library society.
• co-workers welcome!
collaboration is welcome!
http://openlib.org/home/krichel
Thank you for your attention!