For a quick introduction to AgEcon Search features and functionality, check out our short Welcome to AgEcon Search video!
AgEcon Search is a free-to-user Web site that contains the full text of working papers, conference papers and journal articles in applied economics, including the subtopics of agricultural, consumer, energy, environmental, and resource economics. Contributors include academic institutions, government agencies, professional associations, and non-government organizations. See Overview and History for more details.
See our Contact page for more details.
Browse the collections list.
See our interactive map, and click on a pin for details about each collection.
Browse the current list.
All papers in AgEcon Search are part of a series or conference or journal sponsored by one of the participating organizations and we rely on their review mechanisms. The process varies depending on the group.
Browse the list of topics which includes a short description of each topic.
Submission instructions are available here and are also available in video format here, for all document types and here, for journal articles.
See the To Participate section
We welcome your thesis or dissertation. See our special dissertation procedures for including both digital versions and those that are currently only in print.
All papers in AgEcon Search must be in PDF format.
We accept papers in any language. We ask that you include an English title (required) and abstract (if available) to enhance the discoverability of the paper in Google and other search engines.
Generally, yes, although we are a permanent repository and are not designed to continually update drafts of papers over time. Send the updated version of your paper in pdf to aesearch@umn.edu with the link to the current version in AgEcon Search.
As a permanent, formal subject repository we discourage the removal of content unless a paper is erroneous in some way. Our license agreement states that we retain the irrevocable right to host the papers, although this applies primarily at the institutional/organizational/society level (i.e. we will not remove an entire series or journal), not at the individual paper level. If we do agree to remove your paper, we will keep the metadata (title, author) in place. See our policy page for more details.
Send a note to us at aesearch@umn.edu. It is helpful if you include a contact person and/or URL for the sponsoring organization.
Email us at aesearch@umn.edu to be added to the list for the regular weekly alert or see the registration instructions for setting up an account and establishing your own alerts.
Yes, see the Advanced Search and the search tips. Also, you can check out our quick Search Tips Video.
If you register for an account on AgEcon Search you are able to save searches, receive e-mail alerts about new papers based on a search, and save papers to a basket that may be shared with others.
Current statistics are available on individual records and for each collection. Prior to March 2017, only download statistics are available. Older download statistics (January 2001 - 2008) are available here. Select a collection from the dropdown list and locate individual papers by their titles.
Download statistics for each paper are available under "Usage statistics" on each record. For each organization or conference, download statistics for 2008 and earlier are available here
As an internationally recognized source for applied economics literature, AgEcon Search content is highly ranked by search engines such as Google and Google Scholar, and all content is indexed by RePEc (Research Papers in Economics). This greatly increases exposure to early research that is otherwise very difficult to locate.
There are no costs involved in searching or downloading material from AgEcon search. There are no charges for posting papers for groups who submit/upload their own content. We do charge a minimal amount if you need us to perform any digitization or uploading tasks for you. Please check our current Charges for Services for details.
RePEc, Research Papers in Economics (http://repec.org/), is a free index covering materials in all areas of economics. All papers in AgEcon Search are automatically included in RePEc. Authors may register in RePEc and keep track of the usage of their papers. See RePEc Author Service for details.
SSRN, or the Social Science Research Network, is a commercial, subscription-based repository owned by Elsevier. It is not truly open-access like AgEcon Search (AES) and is not focused on agricultural and applied economics, although it does have some of this content. Individuals can upload their papers there, but what users see and what features they can access depends upon fees paid by the user’s home institution. Fees to subscribe for an institution can cost tens of thousands of dollars. SSRN’s content varies from AES’s, particularly with respect to smaller, open access (free) journals in the Global South - which AES actively recruits. Further, Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) indexes everything in AES and not SSRN - leading to larger distribution of content in AES. AES papers get author rankings via RePEc.
With rare exception, publishers of journals in the fields covered in AgEcon Search are fine with older versions of a paper and preprints being available online in the repository. You can check individual journal or publisher policies at Sherpa/RoMEO. We are also happy to post “DRAFT-Do Not Cite” on the paper and on the record, and add a redirect to a full citation and publisher’s website after publication.
Inclusion of a paper in AgEcon Search is not considered publication. It honors the long-time tradition of economists producing working papers and conference papers on a project prior to any journal article submissions. Generally we have found that publishers consider working and conference papers "preprints" and rarely do they require that they be removed from AgEcon Search, since they have not gone through the rigorous review and editing process that a publisher offers. A few publishers have now tried enforcing a "no prior publication" rule on disciplines like economics, and some journal editors also now use tools that flag anything on the web as a prior publication and label it as "self-plagiarism" without looking at what the prior publication is. We are happy to investigate the policy of particular journals in which our contributors wish to publish if there is concern, and can link to a final published version of a paper if asked.
AgEcon Search is not a publisher. If you are trying to get your paper published, you will need to reach out to a traditional publisher, such as a journal.