The Department of Economics at Colgate University uses Digital Commons @ Colgate to contribute to RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), a bibliography of working papers, journal articles, and other economics research. Colgate Economics Professor Chad Sparber and Metadata & Web Librarian Francesca Livermore worked with bepress Consulting Services to streamline the process of ingesting metadata records from Digital Commons into RePEc, and the repository now joins over 1,400 archives already contributing to the resource. Prior to this, the Department’s papers were scattered across several locations, so centralizing them in Digital Commons first has made the process much more manageable.
The discipline of economics has a strong tradition of sharing working papers and collaborative research, so open access was a natural fit for the department. But RePEc is essentially a pointing system, so the articles indexed there must be available in other online locations, such as electronic journals or digital repositories. The department’s representation in RePEc not only increases its own visibility in the field, but also brings the added benefit of additional traffic to the repository.
If you’d like to link your IR’s economics collections to RePEc, contact Consulting Services.
Digital Commons @ Colgate – Colgate University Libraries Research