EconPapers

EconPapers
Name	EconPapers
Type	Bibliographic database and repository
Founded	1999
Founder	RePEc community
Country	International
Languages	English

EconPapers is an online bibliographic database and working paper archive focused on economics and related social sciences. It aggregates metadata and full-text links to working papers, journal articles, software, and datasets from a distributed network of contributors and institutions. The service functions as an access point connecting researchers, policymakers, and students with items cataloged across multiple repositories and publication outlets.

Overview

EconPapers indexes materials originating from universities such as Harvard University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Yale University and London School of Economics; research centers like National Bureau of Economic Research, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Institute for Fiscal Studies, Brookings Institution, and Peterson Institute for International Economics; international organizations including World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations, and European Central Bank; and publishers such as Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley-Blackwell, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press. It draws on citation networks involving authors like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, and Gary Becker. The portal complements repositories hosted by groups such as arXiv, SSRN, and institutional archives maintained by Princeton University, Columbia University, and University of California Berkeley.

History

EconPapers emerged from the RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) initiative, which was conceived by researchers affiliated with Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis and developed with contributions from figures tied to University of Tilburg, Catholic University of Leuven, University of Geneva, Stockholm School of Economics, and Australian National University. Early collaboration involved librarians and academics from British Library, Library of Congress, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, and national repositories. Over time, integration expanded to include metadata from publishers such as Routledge, SAGE Publications, Taylor & Francis, and John Wiley & Sons, and to interoperate with services run by CrossRef, ORCID, Scopus, and Web of Science.

Features and Content

EconPapers provides bibliographic records with links to working papers, journal articles, books, chapters, software, and datasets produced by researchers associated with institutions like Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Booth School of Business, Wharton School, Said Business School, Tsinghua University, Peking University, University of Tokyo, and National University of Singapore. Content covers topics studied by scholars such as John Hicks, Robert Solow, Elinor Ostrom, Kenneth Arrow, and Simon Kuznets and includes publications in journals like American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, and Review of Economic Studies. Functionalities include citation counts, author profiles linked to RePEc Author Service and identifiers like ORCID; classification via JEL Classification; and downloadable metadata compatible with tools from Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, and BibTeX workflows.

Access and Indexing

Indexing relies on decentralized metadata feeds contributed by academic institutions including University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, Indian Statistical Institute, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and Heidelberg University. Discovery integrates with search engines and aggregators such as Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and BASE; and uses standards and services including DOI, Handle System, SWORD, and Open Archives Initiative protocols. Users access records through web interfaces and APIs that support harvesting by libraries and bibliometric services run by Scimago, Clarivate Analytics, and national research assessment bodies like Research Excellence Framework.

Usage and Impact

EconPapers is used by researchers, doctoral students, policymakers, and analysts working at institutions like European Commission, Federal Reserve System, Bank of England, Bank for International Settlements, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization to locate working papers by economists such as Kenneth Rogoff, Daron Acemoglu, Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, and Thomas Piketty. Its aggregated citation and download metrics inform bibliometric studies alongside data from Google Scholar Citations and Scopus Metrics; influence measurement by funding agencies including National Science Foundation and European Research Council; and meta-research by groups at Centre for Open Science and Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford.

Governance and Funding

Governance is community-driven, with administration coordinated by volunteers and maintainers affiliated with research libraries and organizations such as RePEc, IDEAS, and university departments at University of Minnesota, University of Amsterdam, University of Barcelona, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Funding and infrastructure support have come from institutional allocations, library consortiums like OCLC and JISC, grants from bodies such as National Endowment for the Humanities, Horizon 2020, and occasionally sponsorship by learned societies including American Economic Association and Royal Economic Society.

Criticism and Limitations

Critiques center on coverage biases favoring institutions like Ivy League, Russell Group, and Group of Eight (Australian universities) members and on metadata inconsistencies affecting works from smaller presses such as Edward Elgar Publishing and regional repositories in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Other limitations noted by bibliometricians at Leiden University, Bibliometrics Research Unit, and CNRS include incomplete citation linkage compared with CrossRef-backed indexes, uneven preservation guarantees versus centralized archives like LOCKSS, and challenges integrating non-English content from publishers such as Springer Japan and regional university presses.

Category:Bibliographic databases Category:Economics websites