What is SSRN?
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a world wide collaborative of over 258,800 authors and more than 1.7 million users that is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research. Founded in 1994, it is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences. Each of SSRN's networks encourages the early distribution of research results by reviewing and distributing submitted abstracts and full text papers from scholars around the world. SSRN encourages readers to communicate directly with other subscribers and authors concerning their own and other's research. Through our email abstract eJournals we currently reach over 400,000 people in approximately 140 different countries.
SSRN's email abstract eJournals cover over 1,000 different subject areas. The Abstract Database contains information on well over 557,500 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers. The eLibrary currently contains over 460,300 downloadable electronic documents in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Our users are downloading over 11 million full text papers annually. To browse SSRN's eLibrary subject area networks, click here.
SSRN supports the Open Access movement. All scholars may submit papers for free, and author-submitted content is downloadable at no charge by users world-wide.
The Law Library supports the University of Baltimore Law School's participation in the Social Sciences Research Network. In law school rankings, we've been as high as #26 in U.S. law school rankings in terms of articles downloaded in the last 12 months.
SSRN is also used to post your law review articles which have not been accepted for publication by any law review. The idea is to get comments from colleagues and also get a notion of how much interest your subject matter attracts by the number of downloads an article gets. You can thus negotiate with law reviews from a stronger position by saying "My article in one week received 50 downloads" or whatever number is applicable.
The Law Library can help you with submissions to SSRN. You are free to make submissions entirely on your own, although engaging our help can facilitate the process. We can actually make the submission for you along these lines: We can create an abstract from the text of articles if one doesn't exist, or you are of course welcome to provide one. We can also select relevant key words, as well as attaching JEL codes to a submission (JEL = Journal of Economic Literature). We can also select the SSRN e-journals relevant ot announcing your article to the SSRN community. Send electronic versions of your article(s) to, or otherwise contact Harvey Morrell for help, or call 410-837-4657.
ExpressO no longer exists.