The Social Science Research Network Has Jumped the Shark

5 hours ago

SSRN, founded in 1994, was a major open access repository for legal and social science scholarship, offering weekly email updates and download metrics.
In 2016, SSRN was acquired by Elsevier, which initially promised minimal changes but has now introduced significant, unwelcome updates.
Key changes include discontinuing the Research Paper Series after July, banning posted published works, and requiring CC-BY licenses for preprints.
The CC-BY license allows commercial use and modifications without revocation, significantly reducing authors' control over their work.
UCLA Law has shifted to using UC's eScholarship repository, but it faces issues like incomplete archives, lack of author pages, and limited global reach.
SSRN provided global access to millions of authors, while eScholarship is university-specific, potentially reducing visibility and discoverability.
Many researchers find articles via external search tools like Google Scholar, which eScholarship supports, but SSRN offered unique metrics and rankings.

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