Open Access Repository EconStor now with more than 200,000 full-texts

Germany’s largest repository for economics literature gives access to publications from all over the world – collaboration with publishers becomes increasingly important
Kiel/Hamburg, 18 August 2020: EconStor (www.econstor.eu) is Germany’s most important Open Access repository for economics literature. It is operated by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (www.zbw.eu). Within the recent years EconStor has assembled more than 200,000 freely accessible scholarly publications. Content from commercial publishers have an ever larger share in this growth beside the traditional publishing partners from economics research institutions.
This year, EconStor has reached a remarkable size with now more than 200,000 publications. In comparison: five years ago the collection contained 100,000 full-texts. Researchers from all over the world value the EconStor service in three respects:

1. EconStor as an information source – in 2019 alone EconStor counted more than 6.7 million downloads of digital full texts.
2. EconStor as a publication archive – research institutions as well as individual researchers can archive their publications long-term, safely and citably without extra costs Almost 600 institutional partners and more than 1,000 individual authors currently use EconStor to disseminate their publications.
3. EconStor as a distributor in highly frequented international databases and search engines – EconStor has been among RePEc’s ten most important full-text archives worldwide for several years now.

Olaf Siegert, head of Publishing Services at the ZBW, states: “We are happy that so many universities, research institutions and individual authors use our service to disseminate their publications, not only in Germany but also worldwide. EconStor also plays an ever larger role for publications from agreements with publishers. The Open Access transformation, strongly driven by initiatives such as OA2020, DEAL and Plan S, will further amplify this trend.”

EconStor passes the mark of 100,000 full-texts

Germany’s most important repository for economics now belongs to the twelve largest Open Access archives worldwide.

EconStor, the Open Access publication server of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and also Germany’s most important repository for economics, now offers more than 100,000 freely available documents. In the “Ranking Web of Repositories” EconStor is ranked number 12 among more than 2,200 listed archives (category rich files) worldwide.  

This year, EconStor has grown to impressive size. It now offers more than 100,000 freely accessible full texts. Back in 2011 there were only 25,000, growing to  50,000 full-texts in 2013.

Researchers in economics from all over the world value the repository’s services for three reasons:

1. as a source of information: 2.8 million downloads were counted in 2014 (compared to 1.3 million downloads in 2012),
2. as a place where research institutions and individual researchers can archive their publications permanently, safely and citable,
3. as a distributor into much frequented databases – e.g. EconStor is one of the ten most widely used full-text archives within the RePEc network.

EconStor assembles more than 90 per cent of all Economics working papers from Germany and disseminates it on the web. Around 400 national and international institutions use the repository to share their papers, among them Princeton University, the Tinbergen Institute, the Stockholm School of Economics or the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Usage statistics prove EconStor’s international success: About 80 per cent of all downloads come from abroad (mainly from USA, China, the UK and France).

Olaf Siegert, head of publication services at the ZBW, summarises the merits of the repository: “EconStor makes an important contribution to scholarly communication in economics. Our customers value the visibility and findability of their papers in search engines such as Google Scholar, whereas users appreciate the barrier-free and quick access to scholarly publications they look for.”

IZA launches 5 new Open Access Journals

The number of interesting new Open Access Journals in Economics increases, as IZA launches five new field journals

The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) is a private research institute, based in Germany, with the focus on labour market research. They are already editing a prominent Discussion Paper Series (also available on EconStor), which belongs to to the TOP 20 Working Paper Series in RePEc.

On top of that IZA has now started five new Open Access Journals, which focus on the different aspects of Labour Markets:

• IZA Journal of Labor Economics
• IZA Journal of Labor Policy
• IZA Journal of Migration
• IZA Journal of Labor & Development
• IZA Journal of European Labor Studies

All Journals are published with SpringerOpen and do not charge any author fees. Each journal involves peer reviewing, with the focus on a fast decision making and publication process:

Acceptance/rejection decisions are expected to be made “within one month; publication is expected “within two months after submission of the final manuscript.The fast process from the submission to the acceptance/rejection decision is guaranteed by (i) an advanced desk rejection policy and (ii) the fact that only those papers refereed that require minor revisions are accepted while those not accepted are rejected without a detailed referee report. This requires the submission of manuscripts that are considered ready by the author/s for direct publication if found suitable by the editorial team.

With the reputation of the Discussion Paper Series already established, there might be a good chance also for the Journals to enter the ranking lists.

New survey shows: Economists sympathize with publishing reforms and Open Access

A recent ZBW survey among German economists shows that they sympathize with the Elsevier boycott and Open Access, but still support the established reputation and ranking systems

Right now scientists from around the world are boycotting the Elsevier publishing house. The dominant magazine publisher stands accused of monopolizing scientific content by only making it accessible to the public for astronomical subscription prices. In contrast to this, the Open Access community requests that all publicly financed research findings should be made accessible for free. In early May, the ZBW held a survey regarding the current Elsevier boycott and the subject of Open Access which found that the established system of expensive subscription magazines is indeed unpopular, but is largely upheld because of a shortage of alternatives.

Read the full press release here

The World Bank starts its own Open Access repository

More than 2,000 books, articles, reports and research papers available

The World Bank last week launched its Open Knowledge Repository, which is a one-stop-shop for most of the Bank’s research outputs and knowledge products, providing free and unrestricted access. Additional material, including foreign language editions and links to datasets, will be added in the coming year.

The repository uses a dissemation strategy similar to Econstor, which means that their publications are also visible in

“major international repositories (and databases) such as RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), SSRN and Economists Online. This means that the World Bank publishes just once in its own Open Knowledge Repository while its research is also “harvested” and made openly available through many other searchable online repositories, increasing the number of people able to find World Bank content.”

On top of that, the World Bank also tries to negotiate an Open Access friendly environment for future publications of their researchers:

“The Bank is working with journal publishers to determine fair embargo periods after which peer-reviewed journal articles, as accepted for publication, will be added to the repository. The working paper versions of journal articles are available in the Open Knowledge Repository under a Creative Commons attribution-only (CC BY) license without any embargo period.

World Bank Publisher Carlos Rossel expects embargo periods on journal articles to shorten as more organizations opt for open access and the academic publishing industry adapts to the Internet age. “The changes have been tremendous already, but I think there is a groundswell that is saying that frankly part of the value added by journal publishers can be accomplished through other means, and really what’s most important is for our knowledge to be readily accessible,” he said.”

Read  the full press release here

British research funders strengthen their Open Access policy

The UK’s Research Councils (RCUK), who spend about 3 billion Euro per year for  research funding, have proposed a revised policy on Open Access which further clarifies their definition of Open Access and strengthens some of the criteria that must be satisfied.

In particular, the policy permits an embargo of not longer than 12 months in Arts and Humanities or Social Sciences (incl. Economics) and 6 months in all other disciplines, until peer reviewed research papers must be made freely available. This means for example, that researchers in Economics, who are funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council), are required to publish their research results in an Open Access version no longer than 1 year after the original publication.

The new policy of the RCUK also mentions author fees for publishing directly in Open Access Journals:

Where publishing costs are incurred during the lifetime of the grant, Directly Incurred
costs may be used to fund this expenditure. Researchers are recommended, where
applicable, to request funding to cover such costs in their grant applications.
Where publishing costs are incurred after the lifetime of the grant, Indirect Costs may
be used to fund this expenditure. Research Organisations should ensure that these
publishing costs are fully incorporated into their costing models.
Where Research Council funds are used to pay Open Access fees for a paper, the
paper must be made Open Access immediately at the time of on-line publication,
notwithstanding that this may take place before the date of publication of the same
paper in a print/hard copy edition.

Working Papers on RePEc are much more used than Journal Articles

RePEc, one of EconStor’s strong partners in disseminating and showcasing research output in Economics has released new figures on the usage of it’s papers. In their latest blog entry they say:

While a majority [of the papers] are from journals (61%), online working papers are much more popular. While an article is download on average once every two months, working papers are downloaded close to once a month.

http://blog.repec.org/2011/11/26/1-million-works-available-online-through-repec/

EconStor is now among the TOP20 RePEc archives

Increased visibility for German research publications in Economics

RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is the most important database for publications in economics, currently holding more than one million bibliographic records. Many of the documents are in Open Access and therefore freely accessible on the internet. The RePEc database has a worldwide scope and offers researchers and institutions relevant functions such as citation analysis, alerting services and rankings to measure their research output and its impact. Renowned academic publishers such as Elsevier, Blackwell-Wiley and Springer also use the database as a multiplier for their journals. Moreover, RePEc is the largest scholars’ network in its field with more than 30,000 registered economic researchers.

As a national service institution for RePEc, the Open Access publication server EconStor organises the publication records for nearly one hundred German institutions and advises them and their researchers on the optimal use of RePEc. This service is free of charge and includes not only the uploads of publications but also the provision and processing of the title data such as abstracts, author keywords and classifications. Based on publication agreements with the institutions, publications are permanently archived on EconStor and made available in Open Access. Documents are searchable not only in RePEc, but also in Google and other economic portals such as EconBiz and Economists Online.

Publications from economics faculties at universities, but also from research institutes of the Leibniz Association, the Max Planck Society, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Helmholtz Association and the German research association Verein für Socialpolitik add up to more than 32,000 titles in EconStor. Among these publications are working and discussion papers, journal articles and conference contributions. The RePEc service of EconStor was initially funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is now sustainably maintained by a team of ZBW experts.