Whither preprints?

1
Whither preprints?

• Sune Karlsson
• Stockholm School of Economics

2
Background

• Started S-WoPEc (Scandinavian Working Papers in
  Economics) 1997
• Project run by the SSE Library
• Initially funded by the Royal Library
• Founding member of RePEc
• Runs EconPapers.hhs.se, RePEc service
• Runs LogEc.hhs.se, usage statistics for RePEc

3
Scholarly Communication

• Traditional, journal-based process very slow
• Preprints play an important role
• Limited circulation and hard to find

4
Preprints

• Working papers, technical reports, manuscripts
  with limited distribution
• To be published is not sufficient
• Distribution and exposure prior to publication is
  necessary in order to influence current research
• A majority of researchers are marginalized

5
Leveling the playing field

• RePEc and SSRN act as equalizers
• Working papers are now easily located
• Download free of charge (in most cases)
• RePEc 58 500 full texts
• SSRN 36 300 full texts
• RePEc
• 800 000 abstract views/month
• 150 000 full text downloads/month

6
Additional services

• Author registration, authors.repec.orgCVs for
  registered authors
• Citation linking
• 218 Economics journals searchable through RePEc

7
Do we need journals?

• Services provided by journals
• Access to research
• Journals are failing
• Provided by preprint servers
• Quality control, sorting and ranking
• Value added in the refereeing process

8
Towards quality control

• NAJ Econ
• NEP, the RePEc current awareness service could be
  the extended to provide rankings
• Reader input, personal recommendations
• Changing the traditions of the profession is a
  long term process

9
In the mean time

• RePEc is an important outlet for free,
  low-budget, electronic journals
• Economics Bulletin
• Brazilian Electronic Journal of Economics
• The Electronic Journal of Evolutionary Modeling
  and Economic Dynamics
• International Review of Economics Education
• Review on Economic Cycles

10
Conclusions

• Preprint servers
• provide important services now and in the future
• can play an important role in the transformation
  of the publishing model