My economist readers probably are familiar with RePEc. Christian Zimmerman has added a blog to the impressive list of resources over there. Here's what he says under the heading "about this blog".
We, the RePEc team, discuss here the workings of RePEc and seek input from the community on how we can improve. We also want to give more volunteers opportunity to be part of this project and provide valuable services to the profession. Finally, we also discuss issues about the dissemination of research on Economics.
Here's what he means by addressing the dissemination of research. On the topic of peer review...
We can think completely differently. Think of this blog. I rant on a topic, and then others can comment on it and openly declare whether this rant was valuable or not. Why not do this with academic work? An early attempt was done with WoPEc. This was the first RePEc service, similar to IDEAS and EconPapers today, which offered for some time on each paper’s abstract page a discussion section. Participation was minimal and there was very little value added (see an example, I could not find one that actually had comments). This aspect of WoPEc was finally abandoned. A second attempt was organized by SOLE (Society of Labor Economists), that would post every two weeks a new paper to discuss. Again, participation was small, and the project was finally abandoned.
The latest attempt is the Economics E-Journal, which allows registered users to rate and comment on discussion papers. Once the editors find that a paper has generated sufficient interest, it is promoted to the journal, where it can still be discussed. This initiative started this year, so the jury is still out whether it will be successful in the end. So far, it looks very promising.
From time to time, members of the RePEc team are approached and asked whether a discussion section could be added to our services. Given the past experience with WoPEc and the large monitoring costs involved, we are not enthusiastic. Of course if other volunteers are interested in working on this, we may think about it. But first we need to understand whether there is really a demand for this. Maybe RePEc is now too large for this and such initiative should be left to field specific initiatives (SOLE again?).
RePEc is a quality operation. Zimmerman has been one of the driving forces for the site in recent years. Though there is a long history going back to the now-defunct WoPEc as he mentions. (The site still exists but is no longer updated.) One could also trace its lineage back to the working paper site (EconWPA) at Wash U started by Bob Parks. Bill Goffe's Resources for Economics also came out of those early years. Zimmerman also had a quantitative macro and RBC site that is now part of RePEc that goes back to 1995 according to the copyright. (It's a trip down memory lane thinking about all those early sites.) That sounds about right. That was about the time that I was starting grad school and was pretty early in "Internet Time." The RePEc blog might be a good way to get more people involved, and that would be positive for the site and the profession.
Hat tip to Greg Mankiw.
A footnote: The Wash U connection to all those early internet archives is everywhere. As a minor in computer science in college, I remember well the freeware archive at Wash U. It was probably the first internet address that I memorized... wuarchive.wustl.edu. If you were a CS student in the early to mid '90s, you used it. Sadly, this too is defunct. Does anyone else remember wuarchive?
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