Nikos Askitas writes

I hope that you remember me

I have a very poor memory, but I remember.

I have been looking at CollEc recently and started programming the search interface a bit.

CollEc has a search interface.

I would basically like to write a script which will get the shortest path(s) between two authors. So I would like to say get_paths(Askitas, Krichel) and get the data in some form I can work on further. I can strip the HTML with regexs

I'd rather give you the complete dataset.

1. Is there a file which maps RealName to repec handles? Can you point me somewhere?

icanis@katri:~/icanis/input$ cat ras_mans_nodes_1416097129.xml | head -10 <nodes> <node ref="paa1" name="Arild Aakvik" homepage="http://people.uib.no/secaa"/> <node ref="paa11" name="Arnstein Aassve" homepage="http://faculty.unibocconi.eu/arnsteinaassve/"/> <node ref="paa12" name="susan aaronson" homepage="http://www.gwu.edu/~elliott/faculty/aaronson.cfm"/> <node ref="paa13" name="Daniel Aaronson"/> <node ref="paa2" name="David Aadland" homepage="http://www.uwyo.edu/aadland/"/> <node ref="paa22" name="Knut Are Aastveit" homepage="http://www.norges-bank.no/en/about/research/economists/aastveit-knut-are/"/> <node ref="paa23" name="Knut Aase" homepage="http://www.nhh.no/Default.aspx?ID=2004"/> <node ref="paa6" name="Rolf Aaberge"/> <node ref="paa8" name="Rob Aalbers"/>

2. Do you have a script somewhere which would work for pairs of names?

No, but I have the data. Let's look at at example icanis@katri:~/icanis/input$ grep Krichel ras_mans_nodes_1416097129.xml <node ref="pkr1" name="Thomas Krichel" homepage="http://openlib.org/home/krichel"/> icanis@katri:~/icanis/input$ grep Askitas ras_mans_nodes_1416097129.xml <node ref="pas55" name="Nikos Askitas" homepage="http://www.iza.org/home/askitas"/> This gives us the handle, from there we can find the paths in two ways. icanis@katri:~$ grep 'pas55$' icanis/paths/ras/biwe/k/r/1/paths 5 pzi1 pur18 psc166 pzi13 pas55 icanis@katri:~$ grep 'pkr1$' icanis/paths/ras/biwe/a/s/55/paths 5 pzi13 psc166 pur18 pzi1 pkr1 I use the latest of the two path files that I can grep. That's how the search works. BTW, there are close to 1 billion paths.

The search cgi you have now works for Name and handle or for two handles.

Yes, I should write an interface for two.

3. Is there a cgi you can post which will deliver shortest paths as arrays of arrays without html? Even a path per line separated by comma would do.

I have not done this, but you could do it.

4. Would you share ALL the coauthorship data with me?

Sure. Currently I don't have a backup of the paths, since they can be recomputed. But it would take a very long time. If you would provide a backup for me that would help me. Kindly open an account "icanis" on a machine with rsync installed and authorise the key icanis@katri:~$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDOhbsMyNTv9O3h0tu7eMjqdR5t2BG1jxqErz2YVoVcPGfSZ2mOgwMLMSeFQY3YwNzkC/lfzbtGKybm9dl+CfvnERKL3tA5+NiQiXyJ0WZVp/bEvePMMsDzcLv+Z4RHStl9mU+9OuTPDYzpheTWbjswszQc9kE2ECqlRUqfIb1MQ1/UWDfaq9p8O0USYc25t/uM95VOtHTPHvy75d2+8m3NJPhdFX2yqTiD0ra2phdwMrgw+Csivgs/gfhIhMepep29+V+sBvHDhuVOVBS9N87ae7AJlw5HDceIKwkxasFfMB9mw7RxK7OGTGBcM78ykFRustlKAiDy3M9t/iqb9NNh icanis@fricka This is the size of the account right now icanis@katri:~$ du -s . 81919236 .

I would like to write some papers with it?

Write as many or as few as you like. Three additional points. (1) If you can calculate summary statistics on the network, I can use them in the web site. The site is written using XSLT, so an XML file with the stats will be perfect. (2) I have taken liberty to add you to the Collec-run mailing list. You are the sixth member on the list. It has very little traffic, but all correspondance about CollEc should be sent there. (3) I was in Cologne at GESIS between October 13 and 31. I hiked even do the Rheinsteig between Bonn and the Drachenfels on 25th October so I could have met you. But I had forgotten about you, sorry. I am back in NYC now, homeless and jobless, so if you have a consultancy opportunity I would look into it. I will probably be back at GESIS at some stage. -- Cheers, Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel skype:thomaskrichel