Whither preprints? Sune Karlsson Stockholm School of Economics

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

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

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

Leveling the playing field RePEc and SSRN act as equalizers Working papers are now easily located Download free of charge (in most cases) –RePEc full texts –SSRN full texts RePEc – abstract views/month – full text downloads/month

Additional services Author registration, authors.repec.org CVs for registered authors Citation linking 218 Economics journals searchable through RePEc

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

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

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

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