Informationsplattform Open Access: Economics

Economics

In this section we have compiled some information on Open Access (OA) in the field of economics. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to send us an E-mail.

 

General information on Open Access in the field of economics

To date, a broad-based OA movement has not arisen in the field of economics, although many economists take a critical view of the pricing policy of some publishers.

A number of new OA journals have been launched in the last few years in response to conventional publishers' unsatisfactory policies. Apart from the sometimes exorbitant subscription fees, other concrete reasons were the excessively lengthy publishing process and the realisation that Open Access has definite advantages:

"Open Access enables authors to obtain the maximum possible exposure for their work. Freely available papers are read more, cited more, and have more impact than ones available only to paid subscribers." (Theoretical Economics)

Until February 2003, the European Economic Review (EER), which was owned and published by Elsevier, was the official journal of the European Economic Association. Among other things, EEA was unhappy with Elsevier's high subscription price and caused quite a stir in early 2003 when it switched publisher to MIT Press. In March of that year EEA launched a new official journal, the Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA) to replace the EER, reducing the subscription significantly. The JEAA bears the SPARC Alternative logo to purposely document this political signal.

Besides the JEEA publishers MIT Press, there are a number of other publishers of economics journals who offer affordable rather than open access. One example is the Berkeley Electronic Press which publishes a number of online-only economics journals. While it still charges individuals and institutions access fees, these are relatively moderate.

For many decades now, discussion papers and working papers have played a very important role in the field of economics. With the growing importance of the Internet,  many of these papers are now openly accessible or are made available by not-for-profit organisations for a small fee intended only to cover costs. This is the case with the working-paper series published by CEPR and NBER. The latter offers open access to certain user groups, for example to persons from developing and threshold countries. In addition, there are two comprehensive Web offerings which provide access to discussion papers and working papers from around the world: firstly RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) which now offers links to over 250,000 full-text working papers via its services IDEAS and EconPapers, and secondly SSRN (Social Science Research Network) which offers over 150,000 full-text papers. RePEc's service is free of charge for both the submitters of full-text documents and for users. SSRN does not charge user fees either, and individual authors can upload their documents manually free of charge. However, institutes and publishers are charged a fee for automatic uploads.

The EU-funded project Network of European Economists Online (NEEO) was launched in September 2007. NEEO is an initiative of the Nereus consortium of academic libraries. The German NEEO partner is the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) which will contribute the publications of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy to the project. Together with other leading European research institutions, the members of the consortium wish to provide a comprehensive range of OA resources. By harvesting the content of the repositories of the participating institutions, Economists Online will make a wide range of material such as working papers, conference proceedings and primary data sets openly accessible in a central portal. A detailed User Requirement Report was published in 2008.

The Encyclopedia of Business Informatics has been freely accessible online since October 2008. Realised collaboratively by German, Austrian and Swiss universities, the project's main focus is on topics such as information and science management, software development, business information systems, information technology, professional education and research.

References

  • Varian, Hal (2005). Universal Access to Information. In: Communications of the ACM, Oct. 2005, vol. 48, no. 10, p. 65-66.
  • Haucap, Justus; Hartwich, Tobias & Uhde, André (2005). Besonderheiten und Wettbewerbsprobleme des Marktes für wissenschaftliche Fachzeitschriften. (The market for scholarly journals: distinctive features and competition problems). In: Vierteljahreshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung (Economic Research Quarterly), 74, p. 85-107. Available in German only.
  • Ted Berstrom's Journal Pricing Page

Further reading

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Open Access journals

As of September 2008, the Directory of Open Access Journals lists some 143 business and economics journals broken down into the subject areas

The most renowned of these journals are:

  • Economics Bulletin
    Launched in 2001 as a response on the part of economists to the unsatisfactory policies of Elsevier as publishers of the journal Economics Letters, the Economics Bulletin is edited by John Conley of Vanderbilt University. Members of the Editorial Board include Robert Aumann, James Heckman and Paul Romer.
  • Theoretical Economics
    This publication was launched in 2006 as the journal of the Society of Economic Theory (SET). Besides its     commitment to Open Access, one reason for setting up the journal was SET's dissatisfaction with the policies of the Academic Press relating to the Journal of Economic Theory. The editors of Theoretical Economics include Jeffrey C. Ely, Edward Green, Barton L. Lipman and Martin J. Osborne.
  • German Risk and Insurance Review (GRIR)
    This is an OA journal for risk management and insurance based at the University of Cologne.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy(IfW) edits the OA journal Economics. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and has a very illustrious Advisory Board which includes five Nobel Laureates.

The journal BusinessResearch, the official OA journal of the German Academic Association for Business Research, was launched in May 2008.

The following GIGA Journal Family journals are also devoted to economic themes:

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Subject-based repositories

  • EconStor, the document server of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) with over 8,000 full-text papers, mainly from Germany (some 80% of all working-paper series)
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Content mentor

Content mentor: 

Olaf Siegert, German National Library of Economics

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