Where I am coming from Thomas Krichel

summary I am a trained economist. I built a digital library for economists, the RePEc digital library. It’s my main claim to fame. And then I became a library school professor. I am sometimes thought of as a technologist. But I have no formal computer science, nor LIS training.

RePEc History It started with me as a research assistant an in the Economics Department of Loughborough University of Technology in 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

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 BibEcprinted papers WoPEcelectronic papers CodEcsoftware WebEcweb resource listings JokEcjokes HoPEc 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.

based on close to 1200 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 825k item dataset 315,000 working papers 490,000 journal articles 1,850 software components 17,500 book and chapter listings 22,500 author contact and publication listings 11,500 institutional contact listings

RePEc is used in many services Econpapers Economists Online NEP: New Economics Papers Inomics RePEc author service IDEAS RuPEc EDIRC LogEc CitEc

… describes documents Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0 Title: Dynamic Aspect of Growth and Fiscal Policy Author-Name: Thomas Krichel Author-Person: RePEc:per: :thomas_krichel Author- Author-Name: Paul Levine Author- Author-WorkPlace-Name: University of Surrey Classification-JEL: C61; E21; E23; E62; O41 File-URL: ftp:// pub/RePEc/sur/surrec/surrec9601.pdf File-Format: application/pdf Creation-Date: Revision-Date: Handle: RePEc:sur:surrec:9601

… describes persons (RAS) template-type: ReDIF-Person 1.0 name-full: MANKIW, N. GREGORY name-last: MANKIW name-first: N. GREGORY handle: RePEc:per: :N__GREGORY_MANKIW homepage: 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: Author-Article: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:77:y:1987:i:3:p: Author-Article: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:78:y:1988:i:2:p: ….

… describes institutions Template-Type: ReDIF-Institution 1.0 Primary-Name: University of Surrey Primary-Location: Guildford Secondary-Name: Department of Economics Secondary-Phone: (01483) Secondary- Secondary-Fax: (01483) Secondary-Postal: Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH Secondary-Homepage: Handle: RePEc:edi:desuruk

origin of archives Christopher F. Baum administers the setup of archives. The bulk of archives are based with economics departments. They maintained by faculty or staff. Some archives contain converted data from major providers such as commercial publishers, larger organizations such as the US Federal Reserve, and RePEc's own personal submission service, the MPRA.

collection of data A special central archive collects all archive templates. A purpose-written Perl script called remi, written and maintained by Sune Karlsson, builds the basic documents database from all archives. This data is also available via ftp somewhere.

objectives Early objectives are make as many possible of papers available freely online organize a free metadata set for the discipline The basic arguments behind the idea that both are realistic has been discussed elsewhere.

many archives There are close to 1200 RePEc archives. Data is stored in attribute: value templates. Each archive requires one archive template one or more series template An archive may have document templates. All templates use a purpose-built format called ReDIF, designed by Thomas Krichel.

Institutional repositories Across the world libraries are working to build institutional repositories. They try to store the academic output of the institution Research papers Student dissertations Learning materials Dataset

RePEc and IRs In principle, RePEc appears like some sort of precursor to institutional repositories (IRs) before they started. I doubt IRs can be called a success. But RePEc is still expanding. The priniciple difference is that RePEc has a better service infrastructure than IRs have. It is also important that the services feed back to the dataset.

important services EconPapers and IDEAS are web services CitEc forms citation data OAI PMH service NEP is a current awareness service MPRA allows individual to submit papers EDIRC has institutional data RePEc Author Service (RAS) is an author identification service LogEc has usage statistics the humble service

CitEc CitEc is an autonomous citation index for RePEc created and maintained by Jose Manuel Barrueco Cruz. Results of the citation analysis used to be encoded in ReDIF, and made available in RePEc itself. They are encoded in AMF (an XML format), and distributed separetely.

OAI-PHM gateway It is maintained by Thomas Krichel. It offers a OAI-PMH interface to the boring part of RePEc. It uses the AMF format, a format encoded in XML that is is similar to ReDIF. There is a also the compulory OAI-DC format, but it is empty for some instances in the RePEc dataset.

NEP NEP: New Economics Papers is a current awareness service for a part of the documents, the working papers. It was created by and is maintained technically by Thomas Krichel. All additions are filtered into 80 subject-specific reports that issue every week. Computer learning helps editors, otherwise it would be too much work. NEP creates a subject classification for parts of RePEc.

MPRA In the early days the RePEc team allowed individuals to open personal archives. We found out this was a bad idea. In 2005 Ekkehard Schlicht created the Munich Personal RePEc Archive, an EPrints installation. It was the first time that an institution officially committed to maintaining a part of the RePEc infrastructure (other than an archive).

EDIRC EDIRC is the “Economics Departments, Institutions and Research Centers” list compiled by Christian Zimmermann. It's a set of data and a service of the data. The data is redistributed in ReDIF form in a special RePEc archive.

RePEc Author Service This is where authors register themselves can claim associations between them and the documents. The most frequent association type is authorship, hence the name. RAS was created by Thomas Krichel. It is maintained by Christian Zimmermann. Most of the code was written by Ivan V. Kurmanov. The The data is distributed in a special RePEc archive.

LogEc LogEc is the king of RePEc user services. It compiles data on abstract views full-text downloads from participating services (EconPapers, IDEAS, NEP) and others.

the humble service This service is so humble that it does not have a name. Every month Christian Zimmermann sends out mails to all registered authors and all archive maintainers. He reports on the usage of items in RePEc as captured by LogEc.

ranking Christian Zimmermann compiles rankings using the combination of RePEc, NEP, EDIRC, CitEc and LogEc data, at This shows you what RePEc is all about: a cross-penetration of data.

notable absences RePEc has no organizational structure. It is not owned by anybody. It has no income or expenditure. While much of its revolutionary ideas have been conceived by Thomas Krichel, it pretty much can live without him now.

assessment of RePEc It not easy to assess RePEc against its original objectives. Numerators are easy to evaluate, denominators are not. The problem is the lack of good useable data about the denominator.

one good denominator There is a list of 1000 most important ecenomists in the word by Tom Coupe. It is over 10 years old Christian Zimmermann has matched names of the Coupe list with RAS registrants. He found that more than 80% of the Copue's top 1000 are RAS registrants. We can not reach 100%.

perception and communication RePEc is something of a nature that has not been there before. It is not that hard to understand the nature of the data and services that it provides. It is hard to understand how the thing works, or what it actually is. It is probably the thing out there in digital library land that is closesed to a miracle. Miracle are hard to explain eveny for miracle makers.

lessons learnt Performance metrics are crucial to bring in target community members into an academic publishing and documentation system. We need a way to identify the units assessed authors institutions We also need a some agreement about, and exchange data of, usage incidents.

author and institution registration a&ir is an important enabling device. Registration sets up a factual claim that is relavitively simple to check. Setting up a free system that enables free a&ir, and redistributes the data freely is currently Thomas Krichel's main concern.

open library society This is a c charity set up by Thomas Krichel to support the work on the registration systems. The purposes of the society are formulated quite generally. The society can support related purposes.

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

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.

free software according to RMS Free software comes with four freedoms 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

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. We rely on it. There is a business case for free information. We need to make our own.

we rely on the moral case The citizen should be informed… Individuals in the organization should have free access… This is how we justify resources given to us. Often, members of the community who pay get privileged access.

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.

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

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

open library idea: serials data Serial level information is a crucial component of academic library data. Idea: build and maintain free serial records. Two ways to build: Use volunteers and collect in a decentralized way. Make an expensive central collection, disseminate well, charge $$$ for record changes later.

another open library idea: law Much of the legal texts are de jure free. De facto there are two companies who have comprehensive collections and charge a lot of money for the free information bundled with proprietary information. Our moral case calls for a replacement! (it will also create jobs for us)

free legal open library Have all laws and cases online as text identified & related Have citation metadata, so that legal citations can verified be while composing case data. Registration procedure to verify the integrity of data.

open library idea II: drugs Collect data on the composition of all drugs drugs composition reported by drug companies, using open archives drug components documented by the governments, using an open archive Open library brings the two together!

Am I crazy? Money does not make the world go round. Ideas do. When RMS proposed a free replacement for UNIX in the early 80s, most people dismissed the idea. Today it is reality! Similarly, when I started to work on RePEc a totally free and improved A&I dataset in 1993, nobody gave it a high probability to succeed. It is a reality!

obstacles to open libraries 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

Thank you for your attention!