Working Paper

Where Have All the Working Papers Gone? Evidence from Four Major Economics Working Paper Series

Alexandra Baumann, Klaus Wohlrabe
CESifo, Munich, 2020

CESifo Working Paper No. 8328

Working papers or preprints have become an important part in the scientific landscape. Such papers present research before (potentially) being published in refereed journals. But is every working paper finally published in a journal? We answer this question for four major working paper series in economics. Based on linked data in RePEc and a random sample we provide an estimate of 66.5% of more than 28,000 investigated working papers that are published in a journal. About 8% are released as a book chapter. For the remaining 25.5% we find no evidence for what happened to the article.

CESifo Category
Empirical and Theoretical Methods
Keywords: working paper, journals, scholary communication, publication analysis, RePEc
JEL Classification: A120, A140