A few months ago, Peter Shepherd, Project Director at Project COUNTER, asked me to contribute an article to Against The Grain (librarians, publishers and vendors) for their Special Issue on Metrics – The Importance of Being Measured.

I wrote about article level metrics at SSRN and how we view the changing world of information overabundance.  Here is the abstract:

Do you read everything in your field today? Do you even know what everything means any more? Readers of scholarly research are faced with an overabundance of information due to interdisciplinary subject areas, access to research at earlier and multiple stages, and simply more research from more scholars. My simple definition of innovation is the ability to create new things by being exposed to a broader and deeper set of existing things, but broader and deeper have their limits. There is no substitute for reading and truly comprehending a specific article, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to read everything. We need better tools to know what research we need to read. We need to know what we don’t know.

The issue has been published and you can download my article here.

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Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending July 3, 2009:

1. Governance Matters VIII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996-2008
by Daniel Kaufmann (Brookings Institution) and Aart Kraay (World Bank – Development Research Group) and Massimo Mastruzzi (World Bank Institute)

2. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

3. Copyfraud
by Jason Mazzone (Brooklyn Law School)

4. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

5. Why We Have Never Used the Black-Scholes-Merton Option Pricing Formula (fifth version)
by Espen Gaarder Haug (affiliation not provided to SSRN) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NYU-Poly Institute)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending June 26, 2009:

1. Are Stocks Really Less Volatile in the Long Run?
by Lubos Pastor (University of Chicago – Booth School of Business; Centre for Economic Policy Research; National Bureau of Economic Research) and Robert F. Stambaugh (University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School; National Bureau of Economic Research)

2. Regulating Bankers’ Pay
by Lucian A. Bebchuk (Harvard University – Harvard Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research; European Corporate Governance Institute) and Holger Spamann (Harvard University – Harvard Law School)

3. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

4. Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand: Banking and the Panic of 2007
by Gary B. Gorton (Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research)

5. Case Closed
by Robert A. Haugen (Haugen Custom Financial Systems) and Nardin L. Baker (University of California, Irvine – Paul Merage School of Business)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending June 19, 2009:

1. Betas Used by Companies and Professors in Europe: A Survey
by Pablo Fernandez (University of Navarra – IESE Business School) and Vicente J. Bermejo (University of Navarra – IESE Business School)

2. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

3. Case Closed
by Robert A. Haugen (Haugen Custom Financial Systems) and Nardin L. Baker (University of California, Irvine – Paul Merage School of Business)

4. The Black-Litterman Approach: Original Model and Extensions
by Attilio Meucci (Bloomberg ALPHA, Portfolio Analytics and Risk)

5. The Curse of the First-Mover: When Incremental Innovation Leads to Radical Change
by Thierry Rayna (London Metropolitan Business School) and Ludmila Striukova (University College London)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending June 12, 2009:

1. How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students
by Orin S. Kerr (George Washington University – Law School)

2. Regulating Bankers’ Pay
by Lucian A. Bebchuk (Harvard University – Harvard Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research; European Corporate Governance Institute) and Holger Spamann (Harvard University – Harvard Law School)

3. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

4. A Novel Simple but Empirically Consistent Model for Stock Price and Option Pricing
by Huadong (Henry) Pang (J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Quantitative Research)

5. 7 Myths About Green Jobs
by Andrew P. Morriss (University of Illinois College of Law; PERC – Property and Environment Research Center; George Mason University – Mercatus Center) and William T. Bogart (York College of Pennsylvania) and Andrew Dorchak (Case Western Reserve University Law Library) and Roger E. Meiners (University of Texas at Arlington)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending June 5, 2009:

1. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

2. Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand: Banking and the Panic of 2007
by Gary B. Gorton (Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research)

3. Understanding the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
by Yuliya S. Demyanyk (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) and Otto Van Hemert (New York University – Department of Finance)

4. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

5. Governance Matters VII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996-2007
by Daniel Kaufmann (Brookings Institution) and Aart Kraay (World Bank – Development Research Group) and Massimo Mastruzzi (World Bank Institute)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending May 29, 2009:

1. Betas Used by Professors: A Survey with 2,500 Answers
by Pablo Fernandez (University of Navarra – IESE Business School)

2. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

3. Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand: Banking and the Panic of 2007
by Gary B. Gorton (Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research)

4.Understanding the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
by Yuliya S. Demyanyk (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) and Otto Van Hemert (New York University – Department of Finance)

5. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing (SSEP), Inc.) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending May 22, 2009:

1. Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand: Banking and the Panic of 2007
by Gary B. Gorton (Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research)

2. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

3. Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter?
by Steven N. Kaplan (University of Chicago – Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research) and Mark M. Klebanov (University of Chicago – Graduate School of Business) and Morten Sorensen (Columbia Business School; National Bureau of Economic Research; Swedish Institute for Financial Research)

4.Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Cost and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

5. The Crisis of Fair Value Accounting: Making Sense of the Recent Debate
by Christian Laux (Goethe University Frankfurt) and Christian Leuz (University of Chicago – Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research; European Corporate Governance Institute; University of Pennsylvania – Wharton Financial Institutions Center)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending May 15, 2009:

1. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

2. Buying Troubled Assets
by Lucian A. Bebchuk (Harvard University – Harvard Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research; European Corporate Governance Institute)

3. Up in Arms About a Revolting Movement
by Glenn Harlan Reynolds (University of Tennessee College of Law)

4. House Prices, Home Equity-Based Borrowing, and the U.S. Household Leverage Crisis
by Atif R. Mian (University of Chicago – Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research) and Amir Sufi (University of Chicago – Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research)

5. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Cost and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending May 8, 2009:

1. Too Big to Fail, Hidden Risks, and the Fallacy of Large Institutions
by Charles S. Tapiero (NYU-Poly Institute) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NYU-Poly Institute)

2. Interrogation’s Law
by William Ranney Levi (Yale University – Law School)

3. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

4. Market Risk Premium Used in 2008 by Professors: A Survey with 1,400 Answers
by Pablo Fernandez (University of Navarra – IESE Business School)

5. A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket
by Adam Mossoff (George Mason University – School of Law)