1. 1
Open Access and Open Assessment:
The Future of Peer Reviewed Journals?
Experiences with a New Journal in Economics
Rethinking the university after Bologna:
New concepts and practices beyond tradition and the market
December 12th – 13th 2008 , University of Antwerp
Olaf Siegert Korinna Werner-Schwarz
German National Library of Economics (ZBW) Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
www.economics-ejournal.org

2. Overview
(1) Scholarly Communication in Economics
(2) Peer-Review Journals and Open Access
(3) The Concept of Economics
(4) Further Features
(5) Archiving and Dissemination
(6) Organization of the Journal
(7) Economics in Numbers
(8) Outlook
www.economics-ejournal.org

3. (1) Scholarly Communication in Economics
• Preprint culture (Working/Discussion/Research Papers)
• Main research findings in Peer-Review Journals
• Top Journals (mainly Anglo-American) in Social Science Citation
Index (SSCI)
• High subscription prices (up to 3,000 Euros)
• Up to two years between preprint and article
• English as main language, no relevant sub-languages
• Growing use of research data
• Increasing importance of rankings

4. (2) Peer-Review Journals and Open Access (OA)
Traditional (licensed) Journals:
• Oriented at print model (Issues, Lack of “Web 2.0”)
• Lapse of up to two years between preprint and article
• High subscription prices (restricted dissemination)
Open Access Journals:
• High Dissemination (Free availability on the Internet)
• Creative use of Internet („Web 2.0“, rankings), but:
• Not established yet (only 2% of all journals; only 2 OA
journals in SSCI)
www.economics-ejournal.org

5. (3) The Concept 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 issues, just single articles
• No author fees
www.economics-ejournal.org

9. (4) Further Features of the Journal
• Download-ranking (“Most downloaded papers”)
• Full-text links in references of each paper (via RePec)
• “Related papers” and “related links”
• Publication of related data sets for individual articles
• Integration of selected articles in online version of „Financial
Times Deutschland“ (German business newspaper)
• Use of Open Access licence (Creative Commons)
www.economics-ejournal.org

10. (5) Archiving and Dissemination
• All papers are archived in ZBW’s digital repository
• The journal is indexed and abstracted in several major
databases:
– EconLit
– RePEc
– ECONIS
– EBSCO
– IBSS (forthcoming)
– …and in Google / Google Scholar
www.economics-ejournal.org

11. (6) Organisation of the Journal
• Editor / Editorial Office: Kiel Institute (IfW)
• Archiving and Dissemination; Organizational Support:
German National Library of Economics (ZBW)
• Advisory Board: 19 international renowned economists
(including five Nobel prize winners)
• Initial Funding via German Research Foundation (DFG)
www.economics-ejournal.org

12. (7) The Journal in Numbers
• Online since March 2007
• Almost 250 submissions
• 83 Published discussion papers
• 50 Published journal articles
• Very international author affiliation (USA, UK, Italy, Germany)
• 65.000 downloads (i.e. about 500 downloads per paper)
• 1800 registered readers
• 380 comments
• Only 60 ratings and recommendations
www.economics-ejournal.org

13. (8) Outlook
• Integration of citation analysis (via Citec or Google Scholar)
• Trying to get accepted in the SSCI
• Establishing a business model for a sustainable operation
without external funding
• Working on more registered readers and more comments /
ratings
• Better integration of data sets
⇒ Establishing Economics in the rankings of TOP journals
⇒ Trying to push the barriers for scholarly communication!
www.economics-ejournal.org

14. Thank you for listening!
Korinna Werner-Schwarz
korinna.werner-schwarz@economics-ejournal.org
Olaf Siegert
o.siegert@zbw.eu