Social Science Research Network

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a website devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences, particularly the fields of economics, finance, accounting, management, and law. SSRN was founded by Michael Jensen (a financial economist) and is run by him and other scholars.

SSRN Networks:
* Accounting
* Economics
* Entrepreneurship Research & Policy
* Financial Economics
* Health Economics
* Humanities (Classics, English & American Literature, and Philosophy)
* Information Systems & eBusiness
* Legal Scholarship
* Management
* Marketing
* Negotiations
* Political Science
* Social & Environmental Impact
* Social Insurance

Academic papers can be uploaded directly to the site by authors as PDF documents. All author-uploaded papers are available for worldwide free downloading. Users can also subscribe to abstracting e-mail journals covering a broad range of subject matters. These eJournals then periodically distribute emails containing abstracts (with links to the full text where applicable) of papers recently submitted to SSRN in the respective field.

Since its foundation in 1994, SSRN has grown in importance in the academic community. In economics, and to some degree in law (especially in the field of law and economics), almost all papers are now first published as preprints on SSRN and/or on other paper distribution networks such as RePEc before being submitted to an academic journal.

On SSRN, authors and papers are ranked by their number of downloads, which has become an informal indicator of popularity on prepress and open access sites. [See Bernard S. Black and Paul Caron, "Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance", [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=784764 SSRN ID # 784764] (proposing that SSRN's download measure can be useful in ranking scholarly performance of law faculty).]

SSRN, like other preprint services, circulates publications throughout the scholarly community at an early stage, permitting the author to incorporate comments into the final version of the paper before its publication in a journal. Moreover, even if access to the published paper is restricted, access to the original working paper remains open through SSRN.

References

ee also

* Academic databases and search engines

External links

* [http://ssrn.com SSRN]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/media/09link.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&adxnnlx=1213013618-RWqNZGkq59FIkTjpu/oq2Q Link by Link - Now Professors Get Their Star Rankings, Too] , a New York Times article (June 2008)
* [http://www.growthology.org/growthology/2008/06/interview-with.html Interview with SSRN's Founder] , from Growthology.org (June 2008)
* [http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/03.11.30.html The Publisher] , an article about the origin of SSRN
* [http://works.bepress.com/james_grimmelmann/14/ SSRN Considered Harmful] , an article critical of SSRN policies.