The April, 2012, issue of AALL Spectrum (the periodical of the American Association of Law Libraries) discusses whether an IR (Institutional Repository - our Digital Commons) will damage your SSRN rankings in the article, Will an Institutional Repository Hurt My SSRN Ranking? by James M. Donovan and Carol A. Watson.
The authors conclude that an IR not only will NOT harm your SSRN ranking, it actually improves access to your scholarly work. SSRN "excels at delivering their work to the cadre of legal specialists," while the IR exposes your work to a broader base of researchers that SSRN does not reach. Hits delivered to your articles in the Digital Commons are not taken away from your SSRN downloads because "these users often would not have found the SSRN version, especially as studies show most users don't look past the first page or two of Google results."
You may read the entire article at http://aallnet.org/main-menu/Publications/spectrum/Vol-16/No-6/institutional-repository.pdf. And take a look at our own Digital Commons.
The authors conclude that an IR not only will NOT harm your SSRN ranking, it actually improves access to your scholarly work. SSRN "excels at delivering their work to the cadre of legal specialists," while the IR exposes your work to a broader base of researchers that SSRN does not reach. Hits delivered to your articles in the Digital Commons are not taken away from your SSRN downloads because "these users often would not have found the SSRN version, especially as studies show most users don't look past the first page or two of Google results."
You may read the entire article at http://aallnet.org/main-menu/Publications/spectrum/Vol-16/No-6/institutional-repository.pdf. And take a look at our own Digital Commons.
