Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper cited and discussed in policy debates years before (or in place of) eventual journal publication.
- Is an instance
An IZA Institute of Labor Economics discussion/working paper circulated to the labour-economics community for comment while the underlying research is still being refined.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A peer-reviewed, published journal article is not a working paper, even if an earlier working-paper version of the same research still circulates.
- Not an instance
A single-author manuscript self-posted to a personal website with no institutional series, numbering, or vetting is closer to an informal draft or, if posted to a recognised server, a preprint — not a working paper in the institutional-series sense this term describes.
Editorial commentary
A working paper is research circulated in progress through an established institutional series — NBER, IZA, CEPR, and similar bodies run some of the best-known examples — rather than posted informally or held privately until journal submission. The institutional series itself is part of the definition: it gives the paper a stable series number, a citable identity, and (often) light internal vetting, well before formal peer review. Working papers are especially central to economics and the social sciences, where the field’s own publication culture has historically treated the working paper as the primary channel through which research is discussed and cited, with eventual journal publication functioning more as a later certification step than as the paper’s first public appearance.
How it differs from a preprint
A preprint is typically posted to a discipline-wide, open preprint server (arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN, and similar), is usually explicitly framed as not-yet-peer-reviewed, and is not tied to a specific issuing institution’s own numbered series. A working paper is issued by a specific institution’s own series and is often, by convention, explicitly less polished or more provisional in tone than a preprint of the same underlying research would be — some researchers circulate a working paper first, then post a more finished version as a preprint or submit it to a journal.
How it differs from a discussion paper
A discussion paper exists to argue a position and solicit structured deliberation; a working paper exists to circulate empirical or theoretical research still in progress for general feedback ahead of eventual journal submission. Some institutional series (including some literally titled “Discussion Papers,” such as several central-bank and IZA series) blur this line in their naming, but the functional distinction — position-for-deliberation versus research-in-progress-for-feedback — still holds.
How it differs from a technical report
A technical report documents completed technical work in detail (often with an institutional report number, from a lab, agency, or company) and is not necessarily headed toward journal publication at all; a working paper is explicitly framed as research in progress, most often written with eventual journal submission as the expected endpoint.
References
- NBER Working Paper Series, nber.org
- RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), repec.org
- IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Discussion Paper series
Also known as
Discussion paper (working) · WP
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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