About SSRN Top Law Authors

Definitions of measures used in law author rankings

Frequently Asked Questions

Definitions of law authors and papers

  1. I am a law author and I am not on this list. What can I do about this?
  2. I am not a law author but I am treated as one. What can I do about this misclassification?
  3. I am not associated with a law school as you define that term. I have written some papers on law. Are those papers used in the Top Law Author or Top Law School rankings?
  4. How can I get the rest of my papers up on SSRN?
  5. Can I post non-scientific papers on SSRN such as short op-ed, opinion, or expositional papers; the sort of papers that I would generally include in my vita under the section entitled "Other Papers"?

Increasing readership for your papers (and download counts)

  1. Include the URL for your SSRN Author Home Page at the bottom of your email signature.
  2. Keep only one copy of each paper on the web and post it on SSRN.
  3. Post your old papers on SSRN.
  4. Caution: Do not try to game the system.

About SSRN Top Law Authors (Beta)

SSRN publishes an overall list of its Top Authors across all of SSRN. We are developing sublists of top authors in major fields of scholarship, beginning with law.

SSRN Top Law Authors (beta) currently provides a list of the top 1,000 authors affiliated with law schools. This list is updated monthly. We provide author rankings for 6 different measures. Ranks are provided for each measure in the table (in parentheses). Readers can re-order the table by clicking on a column heading. Click on the numerical value of any measure to bring up time series or other information about that measure.

To generate the initial list, we treated authors as "law authors" if they are on the faculty of a "law school", using judgment when necessary to decide which institutions are "law schools". If you believe that you should (or should not) be included in this list, please let us know by emailing us at:

CommentsSuggestions@SSRN.com.

Please indicate your institutional affiliation and include your SSRN author id number. If your institution is not included in our separate list of top law schools, and you believe that it should be, please let us know that as well. SSRN will be creating Top Authors lists for other major areas of scholarship, in addition to law. Each author will be included in only one of these area lists.

The importance of an author's work cannot, of course, be captured by a single ranking. SSRN provides rankings based on a number of measures. These rankings are meant to complement other measures of an author's scholarly impact, including the quality of the journals in which work is published, citation counts, and other measures.

SSRN's rankings can inform your thinking about the productivity and scholarly influence of schools and authors. They can provide valuable data not previously available. However, these measures have important limitations. Use them carefully and wisely.

We solicit your views on how to improve these rankings. Please email us at:

CommentsSuggestions@SSRN.com.

Definitions of measures used in law author rankings

We currently provide author rankings for the following measures.

  1. New Downloads

    Total downloads of all of an author's papers on SSRN during the last 12 months. This provides a measure of the current interest (in the last 12 months) in all of an author's work, including older papers.


  2. New Papers

    The number of full-text papers by an author that were posted to SSRN in the last 12 months. This measure includes all papers that were entered into the SSRN eLibrary within the last 12 months by the author, including papers that were written some time ago. It does not include papers for which only the abstract, but not the full text of the paper, is included in the SSRN eLibrary. The SSRN eLibrary includes more than one version of some papers. We expect to correct for this double counting of papers in a future update.


  3. New Downloads Per Paper

    This provides a measure of the average number of downloads per paper during the last 12 months. This measure covers all of an author's papers, including older papers. This measure is not adjusted for the length of time that a particular paper has been included in the SSRN eLibrary.


  4. Total Downloads

    Total lifetime downloads from SSRN of all of an author's papers.


  5. Total Papers

    The total number of full text papers by an author included in the SSRN eLibrary. This measure does not include papers for which only the abstract, but not the full text of the paper, is included in the SSRN eLibrary. In some cases, the SSRN eLibrary includes more than one version of the same paper. We expect to correct for this double counting of papers in a future update.


  6. Downloads Per Paper

    The average number of lifetime downloads per paper for all of an author's papers. This measure is not adjusted for the length of time that a particular paper has been included in the SSRN eLibrary.


Frequently Asked Questions

Definitions of law authors, and papers

  1. I am a law author and I am not on this list. What can I do about this?

    We included as law authors all authors associated with the law schools that we included in the SSRN Top Law Schools list. If you are associated with one of these law schools please update your affiliation using SSRN HQ. The Top law Authors list is recalculated monthly, and your name should appear when the list is recalculated.

    If you consider yourself a law author but are not associated with one of the schools on our list of law schools, there are two potential solutions. Let us know why the school you are associated with should be considered a law school, and/or let us know that you want to be considered a law author. Note that we will be creating Top Author lists for other SSRN Networks, and authors can only be included in one of these lists. Please communicate your desires to us by providing your name and SSRN author id and emailing us at:

    CommentsSuggestions@SSRN.Com


  2. I am not a law author but I am treated as one. What can I do about this misclassification?

    You are treated as a law author because your SSRN affiliations indicate you are associated with an institution that we consider a law school. If that affiliation is not correct you can change it by going to SSRN HQ. If you are affiliated with a law school but do not wish to be considered a law author please let us know that and which SSRN network you wish to be affiliated with. Note that we will be creating Top Author lists for other SSRN Networks, and authors can only be included in one of these lists. Please communicate your desires to us by providing your name and SSRN author id and emailing us at:

    CommentsSuggestions@SSRN.Com


  3. I am not associated with a law school as you define that term, but I have written some papers on law. Are those papers used in the Top Law Author or Top Law School rankings?

    Law papers not written by authors associated with a law school are not considered in determining the Top Law Author or Top Law School rankings.


  4. How can I get the rest of my papers up on SSRN?

    You can post your older papers on SSRN by submitting them through the My Papers link in SSRN HQ. You can post any paper no matter how old as long as you have the electronic rights to the paper. You can post almost any paper published before the mid 1990's because almost all publisher copyright agreements before that time typically did not include electronic rights. Note, however, that any published papers older than one year will generally not be announced through our email abstracting journals.


  5. Can I post non-scientific papers on SSRN such as short op-ed, opinion, or expositional papers; the sort of papers that I would generally include in my vita under the section entitled "Other Papers"?

    Yes, you can post such papers on SSRN. To distinguish them from normal scholarly papers we ask you to check the box at the bottom of the abstract submission page that says:

    I want to include my submission in:
    [ ] My Papers (this submission will be available for Private Distribution by me)

    These papers will not show up in the SSRN search engine or on public search engines such as Google. To make the paper available from your SSRN author page, you can then check the box "Include on Author Page" next to the paper in the Privately Available Papers section of your My Papers page in SSRN HQ. Downloads of these papers are not included in calculating your SSRN Author Rank.


Increasing readership for your papers (and download counts)

  1. Include the URL for your SSRN Author Home Page at the bottom of your email signature.

    Here is one way to do it:

    Electronic copies of my papers are available from the SSRN eLibrary at:
    http://ssrn.com/author=XXX
    (where you put your SSRN author ID number in place of XXX. Your author ID number is the digits at the end of the URL on your SSRN author page. It is better to use the short-form URL given here for your author page because it is simpler).

  2. Keep only one copy of each paper on the web and post it on SSRN.

    Then link to that copy from your personal or institutional web page(s) where your individual papers are so that the user goes to the SSRN abstract page to download them. The short form URL for any of your papers on SSRN is as follows:

    http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=YYY
    (where you put the SSRN Abstract ID number in place of YYY. The SSRN Abstract ID number for any paper is the digits at the end of the long URL on the SSRN abstract page for your paper.)

    Doing this has several benefits, including: a) you have one place to revise a paper rather than many, b) Google gives more importance to links that come from prestigious places in its Search results and most universities fare well in this ranking, and c) your institution's costs are reduced because they do not need to manage the database of papers for downloading. The MIT Sloan School of Management puts the original copy of faculty member's papers on SSRN and links to them from the Sloan School web site for downloading.

  3. Post your old papers on SSRN.

    Most papers published prior to the mid 1990's can be put on SSRN because very few, if any, copyright assignment agreement(s) prior to that time included electronic rights. Therefore, you as author own them. See "How can I get the rest of my papers up on SSRN?" above.

  4. Caution: Do not try to game the system.

    We have software in place to prevent gaming and SSRN does not look kindly on those who attempt to manipulate the system. We have taken downloads away from those found engaging in manipulation and authors can be banned from SSRN for attempting to game the system.