Scholarly Communications Resources

SSRN allows authors to choose different journals and topics for targeted distribution when uploading papers.

Browse the SSRN Journal and Topic Library - You can develop a list of journals and topics relevant to your work and use the list every time you upload to SSRN.

The Legal Scholarship Network Subject Matter eJournals can be found by expanding Social Sciences, expanding Legal Scholarship Network, and then expanding LSN Subject Matter eJournals. View a screencast demonstrating this.

How to check what SSRN journals a paper is distributed in?

• Editors of SSRN eJournals have discretion to accept your paper when you select an eJournal, and it is possible some of your selections will be rejected. Follow these steps to find out detailed information about your paper's distribution on SSRN.
  • Log in to SSRN and click on "My Papers" in the user drop down menu.
  • For papers under the "Publicly Available Papers" section, you can click on the "DISTRIBUTED" link in the Status column to bring up a detailed view of which SSRN journals your paper is distributed in.

Subscribing to journals allows you to receive e-mail alerts when new articles are sent out. The Law Library pays for faculty to have full access to the Legal Scholarship Network and the Political Science Network.

Once you select a network, you can browse a long list of titles. Different topics are broken down by subject in the “Subject Matter eJournals” list.

If you wanted to subscribe to a specific school’s Research Paper Series, you can explore the “Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies” tree.

To subscribe to a journal, just click the check box, and to unsubscribe make sure the check box next to the journal is unchecked.

You can subscribe to all blue journals on SSRN for free in any subject network. All fee-based orange journals are free for law faculty in the Legal Scholarship Network and Political Science Network.

When you subscribe to a journal on SSRN, you will receive distributions of papers selected by the editors of each journal. These distributions typically come once a week, and they provide a snapshot of titles, authors, and abstracts, along with direct links to the papers available on SSRN. In turn, when you place your papers in SMJs, other scholars around the world will receive your papers in these distributions and can easily click to download them -- thereby driving your impact.