Online accessibility of academic articles and the diversity of economics

Arbeitspapier

A key aspect of generating new ideas is drawing from different elements of past knowledge and combining them into a new idea. In such a process, the diversity of ideas plays a central role. This paper examines the empirical question of how the internet affected the diversity of new research by making the existing literature accessible online. The internet marks a technological shock which affects how academic scientist search for and browse through published documents. Using article-level data from economics journals for the period 1991 to 2009, we document how online accessibility lead academic economists to draw from a more diverse set of literature for their articles, and to write articles which incorporated more diverse contents.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Paper ; No. 75

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Role of Economics; Role of Economists; Market for Economists ; Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness ; Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives ; Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
• Thema: digitization ; online publication ; bibliometrics ; knowledge production function ; recombinant growth ; citations ; networks ; scholarly communication ; Elektronische Publikation ; Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten ; Wirtschaftszeitschrift ; Bibliometrie ; Welt

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Boppart, Timo ; Staub, Kevin E.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): University of Zurich, Department of Economics
• (wo): Zurich
• (wann): 2012

Weitere Informationen

• DOI: doi:10.5167/uzh-62417
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/77555
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ