With some regularity I've directed readers of this blog to abstracts of articles found on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Last week I sent my Contracts students to SSRN to download one of my articles I thought would be of interest. One email to me expressed what I took to be concern over needing to obtain an SSRN account to download the article. Just so.
Everyone (and I'm not really kidding) should get an SSRN account. First, it's free. Second, it doesn't lead to spam. You can sign up to get weekly digests of articles arranged by topic if you like but you don't need to do so. Third, and why SSRN is so valuable, you can search it by topic, keyword, or author. Authors like me (and you) can post papers on SSRN far more quickly than waiting for them to be peer-reviewed, edited, and ultimately published in print form. While the peer-review and editing processes generally add value to even the best authors' drafts, and publishing in a print journal is some evidence of credibility, quick access to the best of scholarly writing on a host of topics is invaluable. And SSRN is international; folks from all over the world publish in it on topics of wide and narrow significance. SSRN is an especially useful resource for lawyers who either don't want to pay for Westlaw or Lexis/Nexis or want material well before it gets to one of those databases.
So open your SSRN account today by going here. And start by downloading everything by author 100651. You'll be glad you did. And so will I.
Everyone (and I'm not really kidding) should get an SSRN account. First, it's free. Second, it doesn't lead to spam. You can sign up to get weekly digests of articles arranged by topic if you like but you don't need to do so. Third, and why SSRN is so valuable, you can search it by topic, keyword, or author. Authors like me (and you) can post papers on SSRN far more quickly than waiting for them to be peer-reviewed, edited, and ultimately published in print form. While the peer-review and editing processes generally add value to even the best authors' drafts, and publishing in a print journal is some evidence of credibility, quick access to the best of scholarly writing on a host of topics is invaluable. And SSRN is international; folks from all over the world publish in it on topics of wide and narrow significance. SSRN is an especially useful resource for lawyers who either don't want to pay for Westlaw or Lexis/Nexis or want material well before it gets to one of those databases.
So open your SSRN account today by going here. And start by downloading everything by author 100651. You'll be glad you did. And so will I.
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