Economics – The Open Access, Open Assessment E-Journal

Economics is a web-based communication and publication platform for economics, designed as an interactive electronic journal. Its main objectives are the international networking of research activities, rapid information exchange among economists and the free, worldwide dissemination of research results in the spirit of the open access concept.

Economics functions as a classic peer-reviewed journal, where, in addition to the usual assessment by invited referees, the journal's registered users may comment on submitted contributions. The comments are made available for open access on the website (open assessment). After an evaluation period of eight weeks, a decision is made as to which contributions are to be published as peer-reviewed journal articles. Internationally renowned economists, including several Nobel laureates, have accepted invitations to serve as referees and on the editorial board.

In order to ensure the best possible use of the articles they are listed in portals such as RePEc and can thus be found easily by search engines such as Google Scholar. Long-term availability is ensured through full-text storage on the ZBW document server.

Add-on services include hyperlinking published articles to other publications on similar themes, and hyperlinking articles' references automatically to the corresponding full texts on the internet.

Economics is managed by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in cooperation with the ZBW and will be sponsored by the DFG from April 2007 until March 2009.