ssrn-econpapers

Social Science Paper Search

Search working papers and published articles across SSRN, RePEc/IDEAS, CrossRef, and Semantic Scholar. Covers economics, finance, law, management, political science, and related social sciences.

CrossRef API (Structured Metadata)

CrossRef provides the most reliable structured search for published social science:

# Search social science articles
curl -s "https://api.crossref.org/works?query=behavioral+economics+nudge&filter=subject:social-science&rows=10&sort=relevance" \
  | python3 -c "
import sys, json
data = json.load(sys.stdin)
for item in data.get('message', {}).get('items', []):
    title = item.get('title', ['N/A'])[0]
    doi = item.get('DOI', 'N/A')
    year = item.get('published-print', item.get('published-online', {}))
    yr = year.get('date-parts', [[None]])[0][0] if year else 'N/A'
    authors = '; '.join(
        f\"{a.get('family','')}, {a.get('given','')}\"
        for a in item.get('author', [])[:3]
    )
    print(f'[{yr}] {title}')
    print(f'  DOI: {doi}')
    print(f'  Authors: {authors}\n')
"

CrossRef Filtered Queries

# Filter by date range and subject
curl -s "https://api.crossref.org/works?query=inequality+mobility&filter=from-pub-date:2020-01-01,subject:economics&rows=10&sort=published&order=desc"

# Search within a specific journal (by ISSN)
curl -s "https://api.crossref.org/journals/0002-8282/works?query=monetary+policy&rows=10"

# Lookup by DOI
curl -s "https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1257/aer.20171330"

RePEc IDEAS Search

Search the largest economics-specific paper database:

# Search IDEAS/RePEc
curl -s "https://ideas.repec.org/cgi-bin/htsearch?q=trade+tariffs+welfare&cmd=Search%21&ul=&m=all&fmt=long&wm=wrd&sp=1&sy=1&dt=range&db=2020-01-01&de=" \
  | python3 -c "
import sys, re
html = sys.stdin.read()
titles = re.findall(r'<dt>\d+\.\s*<a href=\"([^\"]+)\">([^<]+)</a>', html)
for url, title in titles[:10]:
    print(f'{title.strip()}')
    print(f'  https://ideas.repec.org{url}\n')
"

SSRN Search

Search SSRN working papers (HTML scraping, structured API not public):

# Search SSRN by keyword
curl -s "https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/results.cfm?RequestTimeout=50000000&txtKey_Words=climate+finance+risk" \
  -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0" \
  | python3 -c "
import sys, re
html = sys.stdin.read()
papers = re.findall(r'<a class=\"title\" href=\"(https://ssrn.com/abstract=\d+)\"[^>]*>([^<]+)</a>', html)
for url, title in papers[:10]:
    print(f'{title.strip()}')
    print(f'  {url}\n')
"

Semantic Scholar (Backup for Social Science)

# Semantic Scholar API with social science field filter
curl -s "https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/search?query=causal+inference+social+policy&fieldsOfStudy=Economics,Sociology,Political+Science&fields=title,year,authors,citationCount,externalIds&limit=10" \
  | python3 -c "
import sys, json
data = json.load(sys.stdin)
for p in data.get('data', []):
    title = p.get('title', 'N/A')
    year = p.get('year', 'N/A')
    cites = p.get('citationCount', 0)
    authors = ', '.join(a['name'] for a in p.get('authors', [])[:3])
    doi = p.get('externalIds', {}).get('DOI', '')
    print(f'[{year}] ({cites} cites) {title}')
    print(f'  Authors: {authors}')
    if doi:
        print(f'  DOI: {doi}')
    print()
"

Common Social Science Fields (Semantic Scholar)

Use with fieldsOfStudy parameter: Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Business, Psychology, Law, Geography.

Key Journal ISSNs for CrossRef

AER: 0002-8282, QJE: 0033-5533, JPE: 0022-3808, Econometrica: 0012-9682, REStud: 0034-6527, JoF: 0022-1082, APSR: 0003-0554, ASR: 0003-1224.

Best Practices

1. Start with CrossRef for published articles; it provides structured metadata and DOIs.
2. Use SSRN for recent working papers not yet in journals.
3. Use RePEc/IDEAS for the broadest economics-specific coverage.
4. Semantic Scholar is useful as a fallback with citation counts and field filtering.
5. Always include &rows= or &limit= to control result count.
6. Add mailto parameter to CrossRef for polite pool: &mailto=you@example.com.
7. Respect rate limits: CrossRef allows 50 req/sec with mailto, 1 req/sec without.