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on Sociology of Economics |
| By: | Basellini, Ugofilippo |
| Abstract: | BACKGROUND In the light of recent concerns about the reliability of scientific research, the open science movement has attracted considerable attention and interest from a variety of sources, including researchers, research institutions, the business sector, intergovernmental organisations, the media, and the public. However, the current extent of openness in demographic research remains unknown. METHODS All relevant publications in four leading journals of anglophone demography – Demography, Population and Development Review, Population Studies, and Demographic Research – over the last decade are analysed. Using a text-search algorithm, two quantitative metrics of open scientific knowledge are estimated: the share of publications that can be openly accessed, and the share of publications providing open software codes for reproducibility or replicability purposes. RESULTS Two contrasting patterns emerge from these indicators. Access to demographic research papers is increasingly available to everyone, with more than 90% of open-access publications in 2023. Conversely, the provision of open software codes has been and still remains considerably low, with only small signs of improvement over time. Over the last three years, on average 31% of articles in Demographic Research provided these materials and only about 12% in the other journals. CONTRIBUTION This reflection provides the first assessment of the adoption of some open science practices in demographic research and their evolution over the last decade. An urgent change is needed in the sharing of software codes (along with the data used, where possible) to contribute to the advancement of demographic research. Some recommendations for promoting this change are discussed. |
| Date: | 2024–06–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:vrcdh_v1 |
| By: | Advani, Arun (University of Warwick & IFS); Ash, Elliott (ETH Zurich); Boltachka, Anton (ETH Zurich); Cai, David (LSE); Rasul, Imran (UCL & IFS) |
| Abstract: | Issues of racial justice and economic inequalities between racial and ethnic groups have risen to the top of public debate. Economists ability to contribute to these debates is based on the body of race-related research. We study the volume and content of race-related research in economics. We base our analysis on a corpus of 225 000 economics publications from 1960 to 2020 to which we apply an algorithmic approach to classify race-related work. We present three new facts. First, since 1960 less than 2% of economics publications have been race-related. There is an uptick in such work in the mid 1990s. Among the top-5 journals this is driven by the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Political Economy. Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies have each cumulatively published fewer than 15 race-related articles since 1960. Second, on content, while over 50% of race-related publications in the 1970s focused on Black individuals, by the 2010s this had fallen to 20%. There has been a steady decline in the share of race-related research on discrimination since the 1980s, with a rise in the share of studies on identity. Finally, we apply our algorithm to NBER and CEPR working papers posted over the last four decades, to study an earlier stage of the research process. We document a balkanization of race-related research into a few fields, and its continued absence from many others – a result that holds even within the subset of research examining issues of inequality or diversity. We discuss implications of our findings for economists’ ability to contribute to debates on race and ethnicity in the economy. JEL Codes: A11 ; B41. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1548 |