The RePEc Blog

Several RePEc sites are currently going through a complete code rewrite. In the past month, EDIRC, the RePEc Biblio and the RePEc Genealogy went live, without noticeable differences to the user. The IDEAS search is also new, now with more features. We welcomed two new RePEc archives: Scienceproblems.uz and African SEER Centre. We counted 315,383 file downloads and 1,451,029 abstract views. Finally, we reached no important milestone in the past month.

RePEc servers have again been under a lot of stress as robotic traffic continues to be much higher than normal. Or is this the new normal? This means that occasionally some services shut down when server loads are too high, and we apologize for this. In other news, we welcomed a few new RePEc archives during last month: International Journal of Accounting, Business and Finance, Private Investment Promotion Agency, Privietlab, and Shanlax Publications. We counted 384,613 file downloads and 1,634,669 abstract views. And we reached the following milestones:

20’000 students on the RePEc Genealogy
11’000 indexed serials

The big news of the month is that we have reached 5 million documents indexed by publishers in RePEc. This large body of information seems to keep AI bots very busy on our sites, occasionally making some functions unavailable. After weeding out robotic access and other traffic that should not be counted, we found 362,771 file downloads and 1,441,503 abstract views for the month. We welcomed an unusually large lot of new RePEc archives: INSPER, Center for Analysis of Economic Reforms and Communication of Azerbaijan Republic, Economistul, GPR Journals, Academia Mexicana de Investigacion y Dicencia en Innocation (AMIDI), Scientific Open Access Publishing (SOAP), Journal of Applied Economics and Business, Rutgers University (III). And finally, we reached the following milestones:

140’000’000 cumulative downloads
5’000’000 indexed items

March 2025 was marked by the EconPapers and LogEc sites being down for about 2 weeks. Indeed, they had to be shut off because their excessive traffic was negatively affecting networks at the host institution. This is an issue with many bibliographic content providers, as AI robots are furiously trying to gather information by scraping (very unintelligently) any website they can access. IDEAS has also seen this, and had to shut off occasionally some function to accommodate the traffic, which as this point is less than 1% human.

After the usual audit removing non-human traffic, we counted in March 326,122 file downloads and 1,510,699 abstract views from the reporting RePEc site, EconPapers, IDEAS, and NEP. We welcomed two new archives: Journal of Finance Letters and World Biologica. And we reached the following milestones:

24,000 economists listed in the RePEc Genealogy

This blog post has been delayed by the fact that the EconPapers and LogEc sites have been down for about a week, and will be for a few more days. Indeed, traffic by robots has been extremely high for all RePEc sites, leading to some bottlenecks. After parsing logs for human traffic, we counted 344,409 file downloads and 1,977,566 abstract views across reporting RePEc services. We welcomed two new archives: Institutul Național de Cercetări Econimice din Moldova and EuroKD. And we reached the following milestone:
1,500,000 cited journal articles

RePEc is off to a good start in the new year. We counted, after filtering out all the bots and “illicit” traffic 345,676 file downloads and 1,599,356 abstract views. We welcomed two new archives: Journal of Economics and Business Engineering as well as Risk Journals. And we reached the following milestones.

100,000,000 monthly page views on IDEAS (lots of bots, though)
4,900,000 research items indexed
4,000,000 research items with abstracts

Bob Parks started his academic career with an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1968, followed by a PhD from Purdue University in 1971. He then joined Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught for a round 50 years. He left us on January 24, 2025, having touched scores of WUStL students, been vital to the RePEc project, and leaving a lasting impact on the profession in general.

His academic publishing was on microeconomic theory and he taught also econometrics. A long-time director of graduate studies, he was a mentor for many students even when he was not advising them. He also saw the need for a good computing environment for graduate students and set up a lab early on, complete with a direct line to the Internet drawn through the campus with the help of the students.

Bob realized the potential of the Internet for economists: In 1993, he obtained the code for ArXiv and set up the pioneering Economics Working Paper Archive (EconWPA, now archived by the Library of the University of Munich) that laid the foundation for hosting economics working papers on the web. Bob also provided hosting for all sorts of projects, including the precursors of RePEc (NetEc, WoPEc, BibEc, EDIRC, and more) and RePEc itself, and he lectured about the Internet on many campuses and conferences, often with Bill Goffe. He saw a future for the Internet in economics that has largely been realized, in part with Bob’s early support of RePEc.

Bob was always present on the internal RePEc mailing lists, offering his services and his sharp advice. Bob, RePEc and the profession owe you a bunch.

In the early 1990 the internet started to become a more mainstream communication tool. Four early figures emerged with an interest in bringing it to impact scholarly communication in economics. These were George D. Greenwade, Robert P. Parks, William L. Goffe and myself. With Bob’s passing, we lost the second of the quartet. All four took some risk in looking at this issue rather than staying on a strict academic path. Bob and I were intellectually at opposite sides of thinking about the path forward. However, we were both similar in our communication. We appearing determined and strident in written communication. On the early NetEc lists that I ran, we appeared to agree on nothing except our right to have constant verbal spars. I think we first met in Päffgen’s at the time Markus Hatterscheid hosted the first ever NetEc meeting. We must both have been surprised how nice and friendly we were as actual people.

Bob ran the NetEc mirror in WUStL. In the 2000s he contributed two servers. These were important as I lost access to servers in the UK. Remember this was way before hosted servers became commodified. I traveled to St. Louis to set up the servers. He put me up at his house. This was I believe the most important contribution to RePEc. With the closure of EconWPA his impact waned. He took part in the St. Louis RePEc meeting in 2017. At that moment, I did paid tribute both the the man and the place to say we need more of an archival centre in RePEc, basically throwing weight behind his vision. It will hopefully stay with us.

Thomas Krichel

Bob and I collaborated extensively in the early days of the internet. We first connected in 1993 when I was writing the sci.econ.research FAQ, which later became “Resources for Economists on the Internet” and he sent me some very helpful comments. Our relationship blossomed and starting the next year, we gave 30 talks and workshops on how economists might use this new technology. Locations ranged from the ASSA, to the central bank of Hungary, and to the CIA. By the time we stopped these in 2002, internet usage was well established in the profession, and I would like to think that we played a small role in its uptake.

In 1997 we published “The Future Information Infrastructure in Economics” in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. In the opening of that paper, we outlined how economists might use the internet in the future. This outline has come to pass, with online access to data, papers, and real-time collaboration between authors.

Our collaborations were both fruitful and enjoyable. We had complementary skills, and we thoroughly enjoyed working with each other. Looking beyond ourselves, I’d like to think that others benefited from our work.

In checking my voluminous e-mail folder with Bob (more than 7,000 messages), I just reread what was to be our last messages. We were not able to connect when I was in St. Louis in late 2023 and I said that I hoped we would meet next time I was there. I’m so sad that such a meeting will not occur.

Bill Goffe

In the early Internet days, communications were not that fast and any site with some substance needed local mirrors. This is how I first got into contact with Bob, as he set up a North American mirror for my EDIRC project. It seemed that his generosity had infinite resources, while in fact his office was completely taken over by servers hosting the myriads of other projects relying on him. But that was fine with him, as he saw the utility of what he was doing, rightfully so.

That came to an end in 2005 when he had to vacate all this hardware. I ended up hosting the RePEc Author Service, which came in a box through the mail. Ironically, six years later, I would move to St. Louis on the other side of town, with the same box. By then, he was much less active and we met half a dozen times, once at the Bank where he could meet his computing assistant from the early days, who just so happened to be one of my employees. The world is small. And Bob made it better.

Christian Zimmermann

Comments are open.

We concluded the year by reaching a major milestone, 70,000 registered authors, which is triple the membership of the largest professional organization in Economics. We also launched a new service for Bluesky users, as now all NEP reports can be followed there now. Other options are email, RSS, and Mastodon. Authors already had the option to add their Bluesky handle to their profile.

In regular news, we welcomed a couple of new archives: Drexel University and Journal of Sustainable Development Issues. We counted during the month 327,978 file downloads and 1,426,598 abstract views. And we reached the following milestones:
12,000,000 cumulative abstract views for books
70,000 registered authors

Now regarding the year as a whole. We counted 4,721,574 file downloads and 18,772,300 abstract views. Note that this is only a partial picture, as not all RePEc services provide auditable traffic data. 30 new RePEc archives joined. Along with over 2100 extant archives, they added 100 working papers series, 45,000 working papers, 120 journals, 200,000 articles, 130 new software components, 2,500 new books and 20,000 new book chapters (numbers rounded). 3,500 new authors registered, and their profiles include 125,000 more works than 12 months ago.

2025 is expected to be a busy year for RePEc. We will continue to provide services to the Economics professions thanks to our volunteers. Beyond this we hope to launch a new initiative, stay tuned by following this blog.

Given the growing popularity of Bluesky among economists, several features have been added on RePEc sites. The RePEc Author Service now allows authors to add their Bluesky handle to their social media contacts. IDEAS uses that information to create listings of authors on Bluesky by field and country. IDEAS also makes it possible to post any of its pages to Bluesky on the click of a button. This matches what was available for other social media.
In other news, RePEc welcomed one new publication data provider, the Harvard Growth Lab. We counted 417,593 file downloads and 1,659,897 abstract views on EconPapers, IDEAS and NEP. And we reached the following milestone:
250,000 book chapters indexed

Little to report from RePEc this month. One new RePEc archive, Agregat: Journal of Economics and Business. We counted 449,149 file downloads and 1,900,334 abstract views. And we reached the following milestones:

10,000 contributors to the RePEc Genealogy

10 RePEc archives with more than 100,000 indexed items