1. 1
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

2. Overview
(1) Scholarly Communication in Economics
(2) About the Journal
(3) About Open Assessment
(4) About Open Citation Analysis
(5) Lessons Learned
www.economics-ejournal.org

3. (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
www.economics-ejournal.org

4. (2) About the Journal
www.economics-ejournal.org

5. 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)
www.economics-ejournal.org

6. 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
www.economics-ejournal.org

7. 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)
www.economics-ejournal.org

8. (3) About Open Assessment
www.economics-ejournal.org

9. The Two-Stage Publication Process
www.economics-ejournal.org

10. www.economics-ejournal.org

11. www.economics-ejournal.org

12. www.economics-ejournal.org

13. 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)
www.economics-ejournal.org

14. (4) About Open Citation Analysis
www.economics-ejournal.org

15. 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
www.economics-ejournal.org

16. 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
www.economics-ejournal.org

19. 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!
www.economics-ejournal.org

20. (5) Lessons Learned
www.economics-ejournal.org

21. 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
www.economics-ejournal.org

22. 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
www.economics-ejournal.org

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