Introduction The WoPEc project is an application of Internet protocols to the management of a database of metadata of grey literature, demonstrated in the subject area of Economics. Rather than collecting electronic documents representing recent research results in a central store, the project brings together information on publications from various servers.
Users access the database and search for documents that they wish to consult.
They can then retrieve the document from the server where it is stored using standard Internet retrieval protocols. The subject area of Economics is particularly relevant to such a project. Economics has a lively preprint culture of working papers. However, printing, sending out and collecting working papers has been slow and costly. Current awareness of working papers has been handicapped by the lack of a universally accepted collector of metadata, with individual departments unable to afford to catalogue what they receive.