Earlier this year I had the pleasure of speaking at Academic Publishing Europe (APE 2010) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences about article level metrics.  APE 2010 was a very interesting conference with a wonderfully diverse audience.  The sharing was open and the discussions were quite frank, especially considering the number of competitors in the room.

During my conversation (watch) about how each of our perspectives and experiences influence our ability to find solutions in this changing climate, I shared a brief overview of SSRN, our perspective on usage as it relates to downloads, and a few anecdotal stories. Additionally, several other discussions from the conference can be found here. Despite the jet lag and freezing cold temperature, Arnoud de Kemp and the Organising Committee did a great job.  I really enjoyed the experience and look forward to a hopefully warmer APE 2011.

In 2008, SSRN released CiteReader and Reference Technology into their Beta labs. CiteReader captures references from the papers in the SSRN eLibrary. These references are then verified and linked to the cited papers in the eLibrary.

Currently, CiteReader and Reference Technology are accessible to all registered SSRN Users. Registration is free at SSRN’s User HeadQuarters. We hope to take this technology out of the Beta Lab and make it available to the entire public in 2010.

Since we introduced CiteReader and Reference technology into the Beta Lab last year, we have added over a million “Cited By” links to our already existing million links. To date, CiteReader has successfully:

If we captured and verified the references from a paper in the SSRN eLibrary, the Beta Lab Public abstract page will have a “References Tab” [References (#)] where # is the total number of references we have captured and verified on this paper. Click on the tab and the list of verified references for this paper will be listed.

CiteReader References and Citations Tabs

Similarly, if the paper has been cited by other papers in the SSRN eLibrary, there will be a second tab on the public abstract page – the “Citations Tab” [Citations (#)], where # is the total number of citations to this paper from other papers in the SSRN eLibrary.  Click on this tab, and the list of verified citations to this paper will be listed.

These two links allow SSRN users to easily examine the literature an author used to write a paper using the Reference Tab and to read new content that is citing the paper by using the Citations Tab. This quicker feedback on the use of scholarly content will definitely give scholars a trail to follow in their own research, and will perhaps even change the way we rate the use of new content in real time.

One of the biggest challenges in scholarly research today is wading through the growing mountain of content. We fully acknowledge there is an overabundance of information in scholarly research today and are working hard to make searching and sifting through the content contained in our eLibrary much easier. Since we received ~50,000 submissions last year, the SSRN Community needs a better interface to find research papers. After spending time thinking about different approaches to display large quantities of articles, we created the eLibrary Viewer.

The eLibrary Viewer places search results in the left hand column of the page. Each result displays hyper-linked title and authors, and the first few lines of the abstract. In addition, we included buttons to open the full abstract page in another window; view citations, references, and footnotes where available; add the abstract to a user’s MyBriefcase; and share, email, or download the paper. These features will allow readers to quickly review and share multiple articles without having to go back and forth between the results and the content pages. The eLibrary Viewer will reduce a researcher’s time reviewing articles. We hope you like it!

To use the new functionality, sign in to SSRN HQ and click on the Beta tab on the search page. Enter your criteria, click “Search” and then leave a comment telling us what you think of it.

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)