The SSRN Blog

Two recent articles in the Journal of Wine Economics by Roger Hodgson and discussed in Leonard Mlodinow’s Wall Street Journal article A Hint of Hype, A Taste of Illusion throw cold water on expert ratings and wine competition awards.

The articles, An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions (abstract, PDF) and An Examination of Judge Reliability at a Major U.S. Wine Competition (abstract, PDF) provide some of the best empirical data about the awarding of medals and the variability of wine judges’ scoring. Based on a fair bit of experience, I can’t say that I am surprised. Most knowledgeable wine people I know pay attention to ratings and medals but don’t treat them as gospel. They believe as I do that the best bottle of wine is the one you drink with friends.

For oenophiles, the Journal of Wine Economics looks like an interesting journal. For SSRN, it looks like I need to follow up with the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) to get their articles into the SSRN eLibrary.

iSSRN, our free iPhone App, was released recently.  It provides instant access to the latest Social Science and Humanities research in the SSRN eLibrary from scholars around the world. iSSRN is available from Apple’s iTunes store.

iSSRN allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to search over 250,000 papers and read the full text of the papers directly on their device.

Note: This is an updated version of the previous iSSRN App and this version, not the previous one, will be updated in the future.

Not to sound boastful but I was wonderfully surprised to see that SSRN was number one on the current  Ranking Web of World Repositories. The ranking is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain and includes a very impressive list of repositories from around the world.  I know and greatly respect many of the other repositories.

Thank all of you for your continued support of SSRN!

Gregg Gordon (President/CEO) and Diane Baltadonis (Director of Sales & Marketing) will be attending the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International Conference and Annual Meeting, April 26-28 in Orlando, FL.

Gregg will be presenting a session entitled “The Future of Scholarly Publishing”, which will offer insight into trends, technologies and advances associated with scholarly publishing.

Session: A2
Date: Monday, April 27, 2009
Time: 10:30am to 12pm

Description: The senior executives of two independent commercial publishing organizations present their views on the industry, its trends and likely direction. The scholarly publishing industry both mirrors, and shapes, the business school industry, and many of the same pressures and influences play on both — the relevance/rigor debate; role in wider society; globalization; impact of technology; and others. From different standpoints, the presenters will explain some of the workings of the industry, the factors which are shaping it, and what the future for publishers, scholars and students of business might hold.

Presenters: Gregory J. Gordon, president, Social Science Electronic Publishing, and John Peters, chief executive officer, Emerald Publishing

Additionally, Gregg and Diane will be available throughout the conference to speak with individuals regarding SSRN and its services. If you would like to set up a meeting, please email Diane_Baltadonis@ssrn.com.

Welcome to the SSRN Blog, the official blog of the Social Science Research Network.

Since its start in 1994, SSRN has grown significantly — we currently have 18 focused research networks, more than 200,000 papers in the eLibrary, and surpassed 25 million total downloads in December (the number is now more than 27 million). As we reached and surpassed several milestones, we realized that not everyone knows our history or has access to news about the latest updates or changes to the website. The SSRN Blog comes as a natural outcome of our desire to share information and keep the SSRN Community up to date. Hopefully, it will also enhance our already wonderful connections with our users.

The SSRN Blog will not be a broadcast vehicle. We want to engage you in an ongoing conversation. Readers will get updates regarding SSRN’s eLibrary and services, weekly “Top Ten” lists, and announcements of new networks, conferences, and presentations. Our posts will explore and share our perspective on issues such as Open Access, new publishing models and directions for scholarly research, and the technologies that affect us all. We will also be linking several articles and other blog posts in the “Media Mentions” section on the right side of the page.

We are very excited about launching the SSRN Blog, and I personally invite you to join us as we grow and expand the SSRN Community.

Thanks,
Gregg