Metadata characteristics as predictors for editor selectivity in a current awareness service
RePEc is a large digital library for the economics community. NEP: New Economics Papers is a current awareness service for recent additions to RePEc. The service is run by volunteer editors. They filter new additions to RePEc into subject-specific reports. The intended purpose of this current awareness service is to filter papers by subject matter without any judgment of their academic quality. We use binary logistic regression analysis to estimate the probability of a paper being included in any of the subject reports as a function of a range of observable variables. Our analysis suggests that, contrary to their own claims, editors use quality criteria. These include the reputation of the series as well as the reputation of the authors. Our findings suggest that a current awareness service can be used as a first step of a peer-review process.
metadata current awareness services quality refereeing subject indexing materials selection