The Economists Online Subject Repository—Using Institutional Repositories as the Foundation For International Open Access Growth

Abstract

A new subject repository, Economists Online (EO), has recently been launched. The pioneering model upon which it is built, aggregating the subject specific content of a consortium of participating institutions and their repositories, is examined in this article. An overview of existing subject repositories is given, along with an analysis of the scholarly communications landscape in economics and how the new EO subject repository fits into this environment. This paper makes a case for collaboration between institutional repositories as a way of increasing Open Access (OA) access to research.

Keywords:

• subject repositories
• open access
• economics
• institutional repositories

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Tobias Thiel, PhD candidate at LSE who contributed material for the overview of the economics scholarly communication environment. Also, thanks to Hans Geleijnse, Tilburg University, from whom analysis of the existing economic bibliographies was taken.