Forwarded message:
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 18:27:16 -0500
Note: WPA software by PG at LANL, modified by RP at WU
Supported-By: F.E.R.N., good will, beer and volleyball
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Parks & Others)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Parks & Others)
Subject: WP Abstracts and Other Services
ANNOUNCEMENT
May 24, 1996
Publisher: The Free Economics Research Network (FERN)
a group of economists
working to provide information
about economics on the Internet
Copyright: This document is not copyrighted.
Please feel free to redistribute this announcement.
Contents:
EconWPA does Abstracts and Announcements
How to submit an announcement or abstract
Other Services
NetEc
BibEc
WoPEc
WebEc
CodEc
Resources for Economists
EconWPA
Why and what is FERN?
Why you received this announcement and
apology for any duplicate messages
------------------------------------------------------------
EconWPA does Abstracts and Announcements
We are introducing a freely available ABSTRACT and
ANNOUNCEMENT service. The abstract service will archive and
distribute working paper abstracts, while the announcement
service will distribute meeting information and other notices
of professional interest.
This service is now in operation at
http://econwpa.wustl.edu
which as you may know is the Economics Working Paper Archive.
These services are an extension of EconWPA, and so the same
variety of interfaces (e-mail, ftp, gopher and www) are
provided for submission and retrieval. It also means that
abstracts will be mailed out to our current distribution
lists serving over 4,700 subscribers. Abstracts can be
submitted via e-mail with the 'abstract' command and
announcements with the 'announcement' command while as
before, papers can be submitted with the 'put' or 'fput'
command. Web forms are also available. Announcements and
abstracts will be delivered to subscribers who currently
receive EconWPA announcements of submissions. As with
working papers, material from abstracts or announcements can
be searched on-line. Abstracts and announcements will also
be sent to NetEc for inclusion in its databases, just as we
are currently doing for papers.
EconWPA has had this ability since February of 1995 but
have not advertized it. Some of us are still concerned that
users of EconWPA, accustomed to on-line paper announcements,
will not like abstracts and announcements on the same lists
as on-line paper submissions. The costs to us of maintaining
two or three separate services and the costs to the user in
terms of confusing multiple lists appear to outweigh the
advantages. We will attempt to provide search mechanisms
which separate the three (working papers, abstracts and
announcements) and separate the notifications into three
separate e-mail messages.
For more information, you can e-mail:
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: get help_ann help_abs
For information on subscribing to the notification lists
which carry the announcements and abstracts, you can e-mail:
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: get help_lists
or look on <http://econwpa.wustl.edu>. If you have
suggestions or comments, e-mail Larry Blume
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or Bob Parks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
The following section is a brief set of instructions. Longer
and more detailed help is available in the help_ann and
help_abs files mentioned above.
*--*--*--*
How to submit an announcement
*--*--*--*
EconWPA has 26 areas based on JEL categories. Suppose
your announcement was for econometricians -- "em" for short.
You would send e-mail:
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: announcement
Notice that the command, 'announcement', is the subject
of the message. Then you would send a message (as the body
of the e-mail message) like the following (please note the
use of "\\" to separate sections):
--%%--%%--%%--%%-- body of the message --%%--%%--%%--%%--
\\
Title: EconWPA does ABSTRACTS and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Author: Bob Parks
Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: 314-935-5665
Address: Bob Parks
Department of Economics
Campus Box 1208
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130
JEL: C1
Expires: 6/30/96
\\
Announcing an abstract and announcement service freely
available to all economists and those interested in
economics.
..... this is a short 'abstract' of the announcement which
will be mailed to all those on the notification list
IT IS LESS THAN 30 LINES LONG
\\
..... herein would be the full announcement. The full
announcement is not distributed automatically to
the subscribers - they must retreive it with
e-mail, gopher, ftp, or a Web browser.
This section can be any length.
--%%--%%--%%--%%-- end of the message --%%--%%--%%--%%--
The three '\\' are necessary for the automated software
to separate the sections -- Title/Author, Abstract, and Body.
The software does not have an extremely high IQ and hence you
must submit with those fields in the Title/Author section:
Title:, Author:, Contact:, Phone:, Address:, JEL:, and
Expires: and in that order. If you remember TACPAJE you will
get it correct. There is a limit of 20 lines for the
Title/Author and 30 lines for the 'Abstract' sections which
are mailed to the notification lists. These limitations are
to preserve network bandwidth, and spare modem users from
long announcements in which they have no interest.
Abstracts differ in that no Expires: field is required,
and only the Title/Author and 'Abstract' sections are posted
to the archive.
You may, if you wish, add a URL field -- e.g.,
URL: http://good.univ.edu/some/good/stuff.html
to either an announcement or an abstract or a paper. In that
field you can point to a page describing the announcement
(for example a conference registration form), your home page,
or in the case of an abstract the URL for your paper. That
field will display a clickabe link on the Web. You may also
have a Comments: field and any valid url in that field will
also be displayed as a clickable link.
The service is free and it is completely automated. It
does require your time to submit the announcement or
abstract.
------------------------------------------------------------
Other Services
NetEc - an international group who are are working
towards a future with exchange of academic ideas between
those who generate them, rather than through commercial
publishers. NetEc is a free service and it will remain free.
All those who are interested in that aim may join us. Thomas
Krichel founded NetEc in February of 1993. He may be reached
at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*--*--*--*
BiBEc
*--*--*--*
BiBEc maintains bibliographic information of hard-copy
working papers. There are over 39000 papers now in the data
base which is fully searchable. The new EconWPA abstract
service will be integrated into BibEc. Fethi Milli is
responsible for getting this data base on-line. He may be
reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*--*--*--*
WoPEc
*--*--*--*
WoPEc maintains information on abstracts of over 1800
papers which are available on-line (including those at
EconWPA). WoPEc maintains the abstracts while individual
servers maintain the papers themselves. All papers are
retrieved from whatever server on which they are stored.
Jose Manuel Barrueco Cruz is primarily responsible for WoPEc
along with Thomas Krichel. Thomas can be reached at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*--*--*--*
CodEc
*--*--*--*
CodEc provides programs of interest for Economists, both
in binary form (XploRe, BCI Data Manager) and as source code
in different languages (C++, Fortran, Gauss, Mathematica,
Matlab, Rats). CodEc also has links to other sites of
interest on the World Wide Web and a a section on file format
tools. Dirk Eddelbuettel manages CodEc. He may be reached
at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*--*--*--*
WebEc
*--*--*--*
WebEc classifies, describes and provides links to WWW
material of interest to economists. The WebEc categories are
a modified version of the JEL categories with additional
"Webish" categories. Lauri Saarinen created and maintains
this resource. He may be reached at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
All these services may be reached at:
<http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/NetEc.html>
<http://netec.wustl.edu/NetEc.html>
Questions and comments can be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Goffe's Resources for Economists
RFE is a separate resource from EconWPA and NetEc but it
is similar in nature and Bill is a contributor to all the
other services. RFE lists resources for economists which are
available on the net and in May will issue its thirteenth
edition. It is widely recognized as the major source of
information about internet resources for economists. A
previous version appeared in the Journal of economic
perspectives. It is availabe at many sites, including
<http://econwpa.wustl.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html>
<http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html>
Bill can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------------------------------------
There are a large number of resources mentioned in RFE
and WebEc, which are freely available. They would be listed
here except for space considerations.
---------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
EconWPA
EconWPA is a fully automated working paper archive.
Papers, abstracts, and announcements can be submitted via e-
mail or via a WWW form. You can submit using only Netscape
2.0 or above, or in conjunction with any ftp agent and any
other WWW browser (including Lynx) or via e-mail. Papers are
available in their submission format, PostScript, and Acrobat
for your reading pleasure. Neither the submittor of a paper
nor the viewer of a paper is charged a fee. There are 24
areas (based on Journal of Economic Literature
classificiations) each of which has a notification e-mail
list for new postings. You can subscribe to the lists via e-
mail or with a WWW form. Last month, 8,000 papers were
delivered without charge via this service. There are many
other features including various search techniques, cross
referencing of papers, and citation indices.
<http://econwpa.wustl.edu/>
We encourage users to submit to the EconWPA and then make
links from the EconWPA version of a paper to their own or
departmental home pages. EconWPA produces Adobe Acrobat and
Postscript files for all submissions, as well as providing
the original source (TeX, Word, etc.) By linking back to the
Postscript and Acrobat files, users can have at their web-
site screen-readable images of their paper, complete with
graphics. EconWPA provides the disk space and does all the
back-up, and has a large visibility on the net including
mirrors of the archive in other countries. Why use your own
disk space when you can use EconWPA?
Although we are organized on JEL classifications, we are
ready and willing to implement other areas related to
economics, such as finance, accounting, etc. as we have done
for 'Risk and Insurance'.
------------------------------------------------------------
Why and what is FERN?
FERN really isn't. A number of us work to maintain
services such as NetEc, EconWPA, and RFE. There are many
others who maintain lists of economists, lists of economic
departments, e-mail lists, data and information without any
user charge. Much of the information on the Internet is
provided on a similar basis. There is a great deal of
software which is provided freely (Linux, perl, Elm, Pine,
etc.). The providers of such software get non-pecuniary
returns for their efforts. It is similar in our case
although we hope that the profession will recognize these
efforts as part of the professional activity of an academic
economist. To create an organization (FERN for example)
would require using resources that are better devoted to
producing and distributing information, and so we have not
created any such organization.
Social Science Research Network (SSRN),
<http://www.ssrn.com>, recently announced the formation of
the Economics Research Network (ERN). It will publish
abstracts of working papers and accepted papers in 13
different fields in economics. Each of the 13 will be
distributed via an electronic mailing list. While we are
very much in favor of using the Internet for the profession,
we're a bit troubled SSRN's pricing structure in other
fields. While of course there is no free lunch, the Internet
dramatically reduces the cost of distributing information,
and software has dramatically reduced the cost of production.
For instance, the high energy physics community uses the Los
Alamos E-Print Archive <http://xxx.lanl.gov> as their primary
means of scholarly communication. Each day the archive is
accessed by 35,000 users for the 20,000 papers stored there.
There are no fees to users or authors; for years the service
<http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/xxx.jpg> was run by a physicist
<http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/ywn.jpg> who would leave it
untended for months.
In general, academia is built upon ready and even free
exchange of information, and it would be a shame if the new
medium was not used to further reduce costs and increase
access to information. A general view of how the Internet
may influence academia can be found in Stevan Harnad's "The
Postgutenberg Galaxy: How to Get There from Here"
<http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/THES/thes.html>, while
two of us (Goffe and Parks) discuss some of the issues in
"The Future Information Structure in Economics"
<http://econwpa.wustl.edu/eprints/mic/papers/9605/9605001.abs>
While there are certainly areas in which fees should be
charged, we doubt that an abstracting service is one of them
(nor any of the other services which we maintain). An
abstracting service should cost very little to run. Abstract
producers are not compensated for their production of
abstracts, at least from the revenue of an abstracting
service. The service gathers abstracts and then delivers
them. With EconWPA, the user submits the abstract and
software sends it out so the cost is virtually 0. Of course
there is a cost to learning how to submit an abstract, while
mailing an abstract to ERN is a known process. However, if
you don't like submitting your abstract personally, why not
pay a graduate student to do it for you? It will cost a
dollar or two to send it to ERN anyway. In an electronic
world, it is hardly difficult or expensive to provide such
services, unless of course you employ people: to sift through
the mail for hard-copy working papers; to store the hard copy
working papers; to call people on the phone; to retype a
hard-copy document; to reformat what is already typed and in
this day and age, typed electronically; to pay taxes; to pay
salaries; to pay a commercial network provider; ad nauseum.
While ERN hasn't announced prices, SSRN's Financial
Economics Network (FEN) currently charges $25 per year to
join, then $10 for each abstract service one subscribes to.
If ERN follows the same procedure, they will publish about
250 abstracts per year in each of the 13 economics fields.
Your cost per abstract, subscribing to one field would be 14
cents per abstract while subscribing to all areas is about 5
cents per abstract (if they send 3200 abstracts). Of course
you may be willing to pay for this service. Possibly your
perception is that the selectivity of seeing five abstracts
per week per area is worth the price.
Regarding announcements, ERN has not announced a policy.
From what we understand, SSRN distributes announcements
freely to those who are subscribed either as paying customers
or as `trial' subscribers. However, a close look at their
policy of accepting announcements gives some concern:
FEN publishes announcements of interest to both
academic and practicing financial economists. Send
prospective announcements to Vicki Breeden at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Ms. Breeden will
format the announcement to determine its length and
WILL INFORM YOU OF THE FEE (emphasis added).
Of course that might mean a fee of $0 but somehow we have our
doubts.
Compare this to our service. We do not charge
subscribers or users and we do not charge for announcements
because there are essentially no marginal costs to this
service. Even if ERN sends out 3200 abstracts in a year, it
is certainly less than a third of all working papers produced
in economics (there are at least 5,000 articles published per
year in economic journals -- EconLIT abstracts 200 or so
journals and 50 articles each would be 10,000). A (large)
number of authors will be shut out by ERN's abstract service,
especially those who can ill afford to send ERN their papers,
and a large number will fail to see the abstracts because
they fail to pay the minimal $35 per year that FEN charges.
Selectivity is obviously important for a journal, but is
counter-productive for working-paper abstracts. And the
selectivity that ERN will use is unknown.
In the end it is your choice. You can pay for a typist
to retype an abstract (along with all the other costs of
business) or you can access the freely avaiable abstract,
announcement and working paper service at EconWPA. And you
can mail your working paper to ERN or your can electronically
submit your abstract, announcement or paper to EconWPA.
Unlike ERN, we do not plan on offering a jobs listing
service. JOE is now freely available on the Internet, and in
its 1975 meeting, the AEA passed a resolution stating "All
members of the American Economic Association have a
professional obligation to list their job openings in JOE."
The benefits of another forum for jobs ads is unclear. We
prefer to have the AEA operate JOE, possibly on a more timely
and up to date basis. However, we will not screen
announcements which could very well concern jobs.
We think that in the current and future world, academic
writing for which authors receive no direct compensation
should be distributed freely by automatic methods. The
technology is here today. Hence we have and will continue to
maintain our services as a free resource for the profession.
------------------------------------------------------------
***********************************************
* Why you received this announcement and *
* apology for any duplicate messages *
***********************************************
We apologize for any duplicates of this posting that you
might receive, or if you feel that this posting is one more
piece of spam.
To alleviate duplicates, we obtained e-mail addresses for
many e-mail lists -- those in Bill Goffe's Resources for
Economists, ones to which we subscribe, our personal address
lists, and the EconWPA distributon lists.
For 7 e-mail lists, we were unable to get the addresses
and hence have posted this message to them directly.
Combing all those lists. we found 19,410 unique addresses
among 23,583 addresses. Interestingly 16,923 were unique
(subscribed to one e-mail list, or no e-mail lists but in our
other address lists), 1,737 were subscribed to 2 lists, 443
to 3 lists, 168 to 4 lists, 63 to 5 lists, 39 to 6 lists, 19
to 7 lists, 7 to 8 lists, 5 to 9 lists, 2 to 10 lists, 7 to
11 lists, 1 to 14 lists, 1 to 23 lists and this account to 50
lists. Hence we saved 2,493 of you from getting duplicates
although you might still get a duplicate from the 7 lists to
which we posted this message, or possibly you have more than
one e-mail address. We doubt that the cost/benefit ratio is
low enough to have justified our efforts to avoid duplicate
postings.
Some announcements that we have seen recently generated
discussions. Since we are mailing to individuals rather
than to e-mail lists (except the 7), we have set the 'reply'
address to an account which will keep a hypermail archive of
any replies. The address is of the hypermail archive is:
http://wuecona.wustl.edu/~fern
just in case you want to send comments, kudos or flames
there, or read what is posted. You will also see there from
which lists we obtained addresses and the 7 we didn't.
------------------------------------------------------------
