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2007 has been great! The SSRN eLibrary (http://ssrn.com/search) grew to 171,000 documents, the number of authors with papers in SSRN grew to over 85,000, and we surpassed 17 million downloads to date. Full text papers from the SSRN eLibrary are being downloaded at a rate of over 4 million per year and we will pass 20 million downloads to date next fall.
We are very pleased with the growth we are experiencing and motivated by SSRN's role as a catalyst for scholarly innovation through our creation, expansion, and connection of different communities. Our newest networks, Political Science Network (PSN), Classics Research Network (CRN), English and American Literature Research Network (LIT), and Philosophy Research Network (PRN), were announced this fall and already have over 3,000 papers classified into them.
A number of you shared your thoughts on how to improve SSRN and we listened. Technology plays a critical role in scholarly research and in the last five months, we started distributing our completely redesigned HTML abstracting eJournal issues, upgraded SSRN's entire web server cluster, switched from a single Oracle server to an Oracle Real-time Application Cluster, and released the CiteReader beta (http://ssrn.com/update/CiteReader.html). If you look on your My Papers page, you will find a beta tab that will take you to our new, unannounced Simple Submission process for new submissions and revisions (I think you will like it a lot ;). All in all, an incredible amount of development from an awesome team and I want to thank them publicly for their long hours and dedication to improving SSRN.
In the first half of 2008, we will formally announce our new Simple Submission system, expand the networks within the Humanities Research Network, create at least one other specialized research network, user test our new Advanced Search functionality, and complete the revisions and upgrades to our Conference Management System. We still have a lot to do as we continue to expand and improve the SSRN Community.
Our year-end break is scheduled for Monday, 24 December through Sunday, 6 January 2008. During the break, SSRN's abstracting eJournals will not be distributed so that we can perform maintenance on our servers and convert the remaining eJournals to HTML format. We will continue to provide support for downloads, submissions, subscriptions, and answer any questions about our new Beta functionality. For any requests during the break, please contact UserSupport@SSRN.com or call 877-SSRNHelp (toll free 877.777.6435). Outside of the United States, call 00+1+585+4428170.
If I can be of assistance or if you have suggestions on how to improve SSRN, please contact me at Gregg_Gordon@SSRN.com or 585.442.8170. You can also use our new Feedback to SSRN link on most SSRN web pages.
Thank you and Happy Holidays!
Gregg Gordon
President
Social Science Research Network