Standing on the shoulder of giants: the aspect of free-riding in RePEc rankings

Justus Meyer and Klaus Wohlrabe

Applied Economics Letters, 2018, vol. 25, issue 4, 223-228

Abstract: Research papers in economics (RePEc) rankings have become a well-established source of information about actual and perceived academic performance of institutions, academic fields and their authors. One essential ingredient is the impact factors calculated in RePEc which differ from the standard ones. RePEc reports the ratio of the cumulative citations of all articles of a journal and the number of listed items. The continuously updated RePEc impact factors account for the whole journal and citation history. This approach gives rise to a potential free-riding of authors who profit from journal ranking established in the past. In this article, we demonstrate how the rankings of economists change if one calculates yearly impact factors. The distribution of gains and losses is most pronounced among middle-field ranked authors while the top group shows relative persistence.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2017.1310992 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Standing on the shoulder of giants: the aspect of free-riding in RePEc rankings (2018)
Working Paper: Standing on the shoulder of giants: The aspect of free-riding in RePEc rankings (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:25:y:2018:i:4:p:223-228

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2017.1310992

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().