open assessment and open citation analysis - experiences with the journal "economics",...

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Open Assessment and Open Citation Analysis - Experiences with the Journal “Economics”

Open Assessment and Open Citation Analyis – Experiences with the Journal “Economics”

COASP Conference,

September 14th –16th 2009, Lund

Olaf Siegert Korinna Werner-Schwarz

German National Library of Economics (ZBW) Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)

www.economics-ejournal.org

Overview

(1) Scholarly Communication in Economics

(2) About the Journal

(3) About Open Assessment

(4) About Open Citation Analysis

(5) Lessons Learned


(1) Scholarly Communication in Economics

• Globalized discipline (English as predominant language)

• Main research findings in peer-reviewed journals

• Increasing importance of journal rankings

• Top journals in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), which also provides citation analysis and impact factors

• Preprint culture (Working/Discussion/Research Papers), mainly freely available in open access

• For most articles in top journals there is also a preprint version

• Up to two years between preprint and article

• Growing use of research data


(2) About the Journal


Organisation

• Editor / Editorial Office: Kiel Institute (IfW)

• Technical services, archiving and dissemination: German National Library of Economics (ZBW)

• Advisory Board: 19 international renowned economists (including five Nobel prize winners)

• Associate Editors: 150 economists from all over the world

• Initial funding via German Research Foundation (DFG)


Concept

• Open access

• Covers all subfields of economics

• Two-Stage Publication Process:=> Contributions are published as Discussion Papers and as Journal Articles

• Double Peer-Review Process:=> Traditional Peer-Review by referees is supplemented by an “Open Assessment” of registered readers

• No author fees

• No issues, just single articles

• Special Issues on selected topics


Statistics

• Online since March 2007

• Almost 350 submissions

• 135 published discussion papers

• 84 published journal articles

• Very international author affiliation (USA, UK, Italy, Germany)

• 131,000 downloads (i.e. about 600 downloads per paper)


(3) About Open Assessment


The Two-Stage Publication Process


Statistics

• 1,992 registered readers

• 577 comments alongside the discussion papers (on average 4.3 comments/paper)

• 32 comments alongside the articles (on average 0.39 comments/articles)

• 67 ratings (0.79 ratings/article)

• 87 recommendations (1.2 recommendations/article)


(4) About Open Citation Analysis


Background Information

• Aim: providing information about the impact of the journal (Which articles are cited? Who is citing?)

• Use of the CitEc tool (provided by RePEc) since January 2009

• Additional Information: Search in Google Scholar

• Plus: application for SSCI (Social Science Citation Index); currently under review


Citation Analysis with CitEc

• All papers of the E-Journal are stored on ZBW-Repository EconStor

• EconStor provides automatic RePEc-Input-Service

• RePec has implemented the citation analysis tool CiTEc

• CitEc uses about 220,000 free accessible RePEc sources (primarily working papers) for citation analysis

• Monthly updates

• CitEc can be used by input providers for analysing purposes


Citation Analysis with CitEc: First Results

Journal Articles• 21 articles cited (25% of all articles)• Up to 12 citations per article• 50 citations in total • Newest cited article is from April 2009

Discussion Papers• 27 papers cited (20% of all papers)• Up to 12 citations per paper• 55 citations in total • Newest cited paper is from January 2009

=> 40% of all citations in the last 6 months!


(5) Lessons Learned


Open Assessment

• Positive response to the section “Comments and Questions”– fast rising number of comments in the turn of this year– especially steadily growing interest in uploading reader

comments

• Slow rise of ratings

• Steadily rising flow of recommendations

=> In consideration: discontinuing of the rating possibility


Open Citation Analysis

• CitEc-tool of RePEc is extremely helpful • Makes citations more transparent (->self-citations)

• So far mainly analysis of preprints: problem with licensed material (journal articles)

• Google Scholar lists more citations, but:– wrong links (e.g. citing document is older than cited

document)– links lead to the same publication=> no reliable source, but sometimes additive information


Thank you for your attention!

Korinna Werner-Schwarz

[email protected]

Olaf Siegert

[email protected]

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