About the Journal of Economic History Data Repository

The Journal of Economic History is devoted to the multidisciplinary study of history and economics, and is of interest not only to economic historians but to social and demographic historians, as well as economists in general. The journal has broad coverage, in terms of both methodology and geographic scope. Topics covered include money and banking, trade, manufacturing, technology, transportation, industrial organisation, labour, agriculture, servitude, demography, education, economic growth, and the role of government and regulation.

The Journal of Economic History requires authors to deposit data and materials with the openICPSR repository that allow other researchers to replicate analyses in a published article without any additional information from the author. Authors are also required to include a citation pointing to the data in the reference section of the final version of the article sent to the JEH editors. The openICPSR repository automatically generates a citation when the data are “published.”

Deposits should include all data, annotated program code, command files, and documentation that is needed to replicate the findings from a JEH article. Each variable in the data collection should have a set of exhaustive, mutually-exclusive codes. Variable labels and value labels should clearly describe the information or question recorded in that variable. Missing data codes should be defined. Identifying information should be removed from the data to protect confidentiality. Program code and command files should be annotated to facilitate replication and ensure clear correspondence between code and figures, tables, and analyses in the JEH article. For a discussion of best practice in preparing data for sharing, please refer to ICPSR’s Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving, 6th Edition.