From the RePEc blog back on May 17:
In light of today’s announcement that Elsevier has bought SSRN, we take the opportunity to clarify whether this could happen to RePEc. The short answer is: no, this is impossible. The long answer is below.
The objective of RePEc is not not maximize profit or monetary value. It is to maximize global welfare, to use terminology from economics, by enhancing the dissemination of economic research for the publishers, the authors and the readers. The democratization of dissemination is a crucial part of our mission. Hence, RePEc was designed to run at extremely low cost, hence making it possible to make all services available for free. RePEc uses volunteer work and sponsorship for hardware, hosting and bandwidth. Volunteers and sponsors are willing to participate because of this mission. This means in particular that RePEc has no revenue. Thus it is unlikely a takeover target.
Furthermore, RePEc is actually just a set of principles of how to organize metadata about publications in economics. The participating publishers simply adhere to those principles to get their metadata included in RePEc. Anybody can come and use this data to create a service that does something with the RePEc data. There is nothing that could be bought, as all the data is actually put in the public domain. One could create a RePEc service that generates revenue. This would be against the principle of RePEc, and nobody can prevent somebody else to create a free RePEc service that does the same. Thus it is unlikely to happen. And in any case, this would still not mean a takeover of RePEc.
We care about our community of users and are here to serve them. RePEc is there to stay, and stay independent and free.
A long time ago I chose RePEc over SSRN because RePEc was free and SSRN was trying to charge money for their service (I remember getting the email in my Brewster office so it was probably between 1989 and 2001). I don't know how successful SSRN's attempt at profit was short-term ("SSRN reinvests all of the cash it receives after expenses, debt service and dividends, to enhance our services to authors and users. We spend in excess of $1,000,000 per year on system development and user support.") but long-term it turned out OK.
I put App State's Departmental Working Paper Series online in 2005 (it has been managed by Ash Morgan since 2009). I can't imagine how SSRN's service can come close to matching RePEc's. For example, the departmental and individual rankings give us raw material to objectively boast. The journal rankings are very helpful (e.g., you can watch JAERE rise) but there are some oddities (e.g., Economics Bulletin is #11?).
While I'm at it, here is my current top 20 E&R journal rankings:
- 52 – Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
- 57 – Ecological Economics
- 74 – Review of Environmental Economics and Policy
- 117 – Environmental and Resource Economics
- 128 - American Journal of Agricultural Economics
- 153 – Resource and Energy Economics
- 159 - International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics
- 164 – Land Economics
- 188 - Annual Review of Resource Economics
- 231 – Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
- 248 - Journal of Agricultural Economics
- 268 - Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
- 309 - Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
- 318/616 - Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics
- 359/439 - Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
- 380 - Agricultural and Resource Economics Review
- 483 – Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics
- 708 – Environmental Economics and Policy Studies
- 965 – Marine Resource Economics
- 973 - Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy
Key words: environmental, resource, agricultural, energy
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