Correcting content on IDEAS and RePEc

RePEc's data is highly decentralized and pulled together from many sources. It can be quite confusing how to get anything corrected. This page is a guide that should help users to get RePEc listings more error-free. If you do not find an answer to your question, you may find it in the FAQ.

If a record is wrong

If you find that a particular item has an error (title, author, link to full text, etc), the person who can change that is the publisher. A contact email is listed on the "corrections" tab for this item. We cannot change something that is supplied by the publisher, only the publisher can.

Guiding principles

Most data is provided by publishers, and they hold the keys to most corrections. Relevant contact details are provided on every abtract page and series or journal listing. Also, every item on RePEc has a unique and permanent handle (identifier). It always of the format RePEc:aaa:ssssss:xxxxx where aaa is a three-letter archive code, ssssss is a six-letter series or journal code, and xxxxx is a code for a particular item, which can be any number of characters. The only exceptions to this rule are author short-IDs, of the form pxxyyyy where xx are two letters and yyyy are up to four (for now) digits, and institutions handles, of the form RePEc:edi:yyyyyyy where yyyyyyy are seven characters. Always refer to these handles and short-IDs when making a request. As mentioned, RePEc data is highly decentralized. This also implies that a correction may take some time to show up in the various services as it bounces around or needs to be validated. In particular, some RePEc services follow a refresh cycle and a correction may not show until the relevant page is up for a refresh. All such cycles are less than a month long, and most corrections will show up within days.

Jump to corrections relevant for authors, editors, publishers.

Corrections for authors

Some of my work is not listed in RePEc

Encourage your publisher to index it. That publisher may be your own institution which can open an archive indexing its working papers and other publications. Instructions are here. If that does not work out, you can upload your work at MPRA. Note that you need to have the right to do so and that published versions are typically going to be refused on copyright grounds, but previous versions are typically fine. Check publisher policies here.

Some of my work is listed on IDEAS, but the RePEc Author Service does not find it

Most of the time, the reason is that you have previously refused it, and it is thus not suggested to you. To "unrefuse" it, log into the RePEc Author Service, click on "research" and then on "refused items" to correct the situation.

If this does not help, the typical situation is that the publisher has violated the unicity principle of the handle (see guidelines above). IDEAS will still display it, but the RePEc Author Service does not tolerate such errors. Contact the publisher.

I have claimed an item in the RePEc Author Service, but there is no link to my profile from the abtract page

Wait for the abstract page to refresh. It can take a few days for it to be part of the refresh stack.

How can I link different versions of the same work?

As long as you claimed all versions in your author profile and the titles are very similar, this will happen automatically. If the titles differ, you can link them using this form and the relevant handles.

How can I add citations to my work?

Sometimes we cannot extract references from documents, either because they are not available in the right format or because publishers do not grant us access to them. You can help adding those references using this form. Note that you add there the references listed in a particular work, and we ask to add all references, not just those to your work.

My work is not displayed correctly on RePEc

If anything is wrong (typos, link to pdf, missing authors, etc.), contact the publisher. There is always an email address listed for that. RePEc cannot fix that if the publisher does not do it.

An unrelated author is listed on one of my abstract pages!

This can happen for various reasons. The most common, unfortunately, is that a publisher has broken the principle that a handle such be permanent, that is, it has reused a previous assigned handle. Undoing this requires a lot of work and will depend on the extend of the damage.

It can also happen that somebody erroneously attributed this work to oneself. Contact the author to get that fixed, or if that fails, the RePEc Author Service administrator.

Finally, it can happen, but rarely, that the publisher put in the wrong author RePEc short-id. Contact the publisher to get that fixed.

I am not listed on my institution's EDIRC page

That is because you have not affiliated yourself with an existing institutional entry from EDIRC in your RePEc Author Service profile. You likely suggested a new entry, and this duplicate will not trigger the link.

If you did things right, it may take two days for your to show up.

Corrections for editors

I want to be listed as editor with my journal listing

There are two ways to get this done. One is to have your publisher add your coordinates to the RePEc template for your journal. The contact person for this is on your journal listing. The other is to add your journal to your RePEc Author Service profile. You will need to do a manual search with its handle.

I have stopped being editor, how I get my editorship removed?

As there are two ways to be listed as editor (see above), you may need to undo it at both places. Contact your publisher to remove your name and go into your list of accepted item in your RePEc profile (under "research") to remove it.

My journal is not properly indexed

Blame your publisher. A contact is indicated in your journal's listing.

Corrections for publishers

I have indexed some works, but they are not showing up.

Before contacting RePEc, you can easily self-diagnose the situation and remedy it. For this, head to the EconPapers checker and add your three-letter archive code to the end of the URL. Then you should see whether we had difficulties getting to your data, or whether your data had syntax errors.

If nothing seems wrong, check that your data is actually visible. You can do this by visiting your RePEc archive with your web broser and check whether you can actually download the files (do not worry about syntax error messages). If you cannot get the files, fix the links.

Finally, remember that all files need to have extension .rdf, and that series or journal directories need to have six-letter names.

Our contact details have changed

Amend the series and archive templates (xxxseri.rdf and xxxarch.rdf files in the root of your RePEc archive). If URLs for your full texts have moved, modify the relevant files in your RePEc archive.