SSRN’s Impact on Citations to Legal Scholarship and How to Maximize It

Abstract

We recently documented several common characteristics of a set of well-cited papers. Our data indicate that unexpected factors — title length, number of pages, and so on — may play a role in citations. Here we use the same data set to explore the impact of another characteristic: open access. Specifically, the impact posting a version of an article to SSRN has on citations to the journal published article. To do that, we compared a set of well-cited articles to sets of poorly cited ones. The comparison focused on whether or not an SSRN version of the article existed, and, if so, the characteristics of the SSRN posting.

We expected to see some benefit from posting to SSRN because doing so increases exposure and gives other researchers, especially those who lack access to legal databases, an easily accessible version of the paper. The data supports our hypothesis. Nearly 90% of the well-cited papers we looked at had an SSRN corollary, while less than 50% of the poorly-cited papers did.

Several other characteristics also appear relevant. First, it matters when an author posts a paper to SSRN, with 95% of the top-articles group posting to SSRN in or before the year of journal publication. Second, the number of keywords and abstract length on SSRN appear to play a role in citations, with papers in the top-articles group tending to have more keywords and longer abstracts. Finally, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools indicate that SSRN may have a search results visibility advantage over smaller open-source options, like individual journal websites.

In this paper, we offer a brief overview of prior research on the benefits of open access. We then provide our data and findings. We conclude with suggestions and details on the SSRN submission process and a discussion of how Google may handle SSRN PDFs. This paper looks at law-focused papers but many of the findings likely extend to other disciplines.

Keywords: open access, OA, SSRN, citations, legal citations, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Google, abstract length

JEL Classification: K00, K10