Digital%20scholarly%20communication%20in%20Economics:%20from%20NetEc%20to%20RePEc - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Digital%20scholarly%20communication%20in%20Economics:%20from%20NetEc%20to%20RePEc

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Bill suggested a system based on a system like usenet news. The foundation of RePEc ... scientific material through the 'Faustian Bargain' of academics and publishers. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Digital%20scholarly%20communication%20in%20Economics:%20from%20NetEc%20to%20RePEc

1
Digital scholarly communication in Economics
from NetEc to RePEc

Thomas Krichel
http//openlib.org/home/krichel
work partly sponsored by the Joint Information
Systems Committee through its Electronic
Libraries Programme

2
Structure of this talk

History from NetEc (founded 1993) to RePEc
(founded 1997)
Operational principles and mission of RePEc

3
Early history of my interest

1991
Contents Warwick Working Paper acquisitions
lists in CoREJ
Technology email lists
Idea distribute the acquisitions lists through
email lists
leads to the foundation of BibEc

1992
Contents Public domain software for TeX, emacs,
etc
Technology anonymous ftp
Idea make papers available on public archive
that are accessible on the Internet
leads to the foundation of WoPEc

4
The Foundation of NetEc

NetEc is a group of Internet-based services that
help scholarly communication in Economics. It is
an early example of a cyberspace charity.
It was founded in February 1993 on a gopher
server at Manchester Computing.
On the WWW since 1994,
mirrored in Japan and the United States since
1995.
The initial services were BibEc and WoPEc.

5
The BibEc project 1993 to 1997

Based mainly on acquisitions data for printed
economics working papers from the Documentation
Center of the Economics department at the
University of Montreal.
Run on a volunteer basis by Thomas Krichel and
Fethy Mili
Holdings go back to the late 1980s, around 40,000
items
data is converted to html and placed on a web
server

6
The WoPEc project 1993 to 1997

Central collection of bibliographic data on
electronic working papers
Initially unpaid volunteer work by José Manuel
Barrueco Cruz and Thomas Krichel
In 1996--1998 JISC funding allows José Manuel to
work full time on the project
5,000 papers in 1997

7
BibEc and WoPEc 1993 to 1997

Data converted to a whois/IAFA like format
static gopher/web pages updated periodically
whois server (powered by digger of bunyip.com)
with web-based fielded queries using an in-house
query script
WAIS index of the full-text pages
WoPEc-announce and BibEc-announce mailing lists

8
Closely Related efforts 1993--1997

EconWPA
manually integrated into WoPEc since 1994
Fed in Print
integrated into BibEc and WoPEc since 1994
departmental archives e.g., Humbolt Universität,
University of California San Diego
DEGREE
S-WoPEc

9
Related efforts Other NetEc projects

CodEc 1994--
Collection of computer code by Dirk Eddelbüttel
WebEc 1994--
Collection of WWW links to resources for
economists, by Lauri Saarinen joined NetEc in
1995
JokEc 1995--
Collection of jokes about economists, by Pasi
Kuoppomäki, joined NetEc in 1997

10
Projects associated with NetEc

They are mirrored on the NetEc sites, but are not
part of NetEc
Resources for Economists on the Internet by
William L. Goffe
Economics Departments, Institutions and Research
Centers (EDIRC) by Christian Zimmermann

11
NetEc and Co. 1997

A set of services,
all are free to the end-user,
most are powered by volunteers,
build through centralized collection therefore
not sustainable as the data mass increases,
most service have specific user interfaces to
their data,
many functions are mirrored on the three sites

12
Focus on the digital academic papers

BibEc and WoPEc were centralized collections of
metadata about documents held at various archives
and from various providers, they needed to
decentralize.
In the early days of the projects, a distributed
database approach was thought to be the way
forward, for example using the whois protocol,
or Dienst
an alternative approach would to collect all
papers in one archive, the approach that works
successfully for arXiv.org but unsuccessfully for
EconWPA
Debate on centralized versus decentralized
distribution

13
Bill Goffes vision 1995

What I would suggest is this a distributed
system with any number of sites, each mirroring
each other. archives could "join" the system
(say it was written in perl so could run on NT as
well as Unix). Then you'd have the best of both
worlds Such a system could easily grow with
the profession's use of the net. Such a system
would GREATLY benefit the profession.
Bill suggested a system based on a system like
usenet news.

14
The foundation of RePEc

Founding fathers the BibEc and WoPEc projects,
DEGREE, S-WoPEc
two initial drafts by Thomas Krichel were revised
at a meeting in Guildford in May 1997
ReDIF, a metadata format
The Guildford protocol, a convention how to store
ReDIF on ftp or http servers

15
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.

16
RePEc is based on 130 archives

WoPEc
EconWPA
DEGREE
S-WoPEc
NBER
CEPR

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

17
to form one dataset...

over 100,000 items in over 1,000 series, contains
working paper, published paper, software,
personal and institutional data
largest distributed free source about online
scientific publications, over 32,000 electronic
papers
data is encoded using the purpose-built ReDIF
format
all archives follow a convention called the
Guildford protocol on how to store ReDIF files
and other data on their servers. Therefore the
archives can be mirrored.

18
RePEc is used in many services

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

IDEAS
RuPEc
EDIRC
HoPEc

19
describes documents

Template-Type ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title Dynamic Aspect of Growth and Fiscal Policy
Author-Name Thomas Krichel
Author-Person RePEcper1965-06-05thomas_kriche
l
Author-Email T.Krichel_at_surrey.ac.uk
Author-Name Paul Levine
Author-Email P.Levine_at_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 RePEcsursurrec9601

20
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
England
Email t.krichel_at_surrey.ac.uk
Homepage http//gretel.econ.surrey.ac.uk
Workplace-Institution RePEcedidesuruk
Author-Paper RePEcsursurrec9801
Author-Paper RePEcsursurrec9601
Author-Paper RePEcrpcrdfdocconcepts
Author-Paper RePEcrpcrdfdocReDIF
Handle RePEcper1965-06-05THOMAS_KRICHEL

21
describes institutions (EDIRC)

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_at_surrey.ac.uk
Secondary-Fax (01483) 259548
Secondary-Postal Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH
Secondary-Homepage
http//www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/
Handle RePEcedidesuruk

22
The RePEc vision

It is a collaborative effort of community
wide-knowledge sharing by discpline champions and
librarians. The relational features allow to
share the burden of cataloguing and reduce the
cost of keeping the collection up-to-date.
Once a critical mass of data and user services is
reached outsiders face strong incentives to
contribute.
RePEc promotes free exchange of data between
academics.
It fights the appropriation of scientific
material through the Faustian Bargain of
academics and publishers.

23
Conclusion

When a technological shock (like the Internet)
hits a social structure (like the scholarly
communication system), then there is an
opportunity for new entrants to come along.
This opportunity is here today.
Seize it.

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