Economists rely on three major sources of information:
1. Journal articles. Journal articles serve as a record of information that has already been communicated. They are peer-reviewed and of high quality compared to working papers. Journal articles are used to assess scholarly achievement.
2. Working papers. Working papers communicate the most recent scholarship. They are important because significant time elapses between manuscript submission and publication in the field. Working papers are not peer-reviewed and are used to gather comments and feedback on work in progress.
3. Datasets. Economists use datasets to replicate or challenge the conclusions of others in the field and as a teaching tool. Some journals, such as the American Economic Review, now make datasets available with each article.
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This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowSocial science data repository, management, and curation consortium. The majority of datasets may be downloaded for analysis and data can be uploaded for preservation archiving and sharing. The ICPSR Bibliography of Data-related Literature is an index dating back to 1962, containing over 80,000 citations of works using data from the archive, including journal articles, books, book chapters, government and agency reports, working papers, dissertations, conference papers, and more.