SSRN is a repository of scholarly papers from a variety of disciplines, including law. Dan Markel recently complained that SSRN is not being used for its intended purpose:
I had been under the impression that SSRN was developed initially so that scholars could see "tomorrow's research today." In other words, scholars (and the public) could access drafts of work well before publication, along with past publications by a particular author. And indeed, SSRN's homepage indicates that this is the point:
Each of SSRN's networks encourages the early distribution of research results by publishing submitted abstracts and by soliciting abstracts of top quality research papers around the world.
The "problem," as I see it, is that, at least in law, SSRN is being used as a way to generate more information relevant to the evaluation of a potential scholar (should we hire her, well, let's consider how many articles are up on SSRN, or how many downloads the person's scholarship gets, or, how good the article on SSRN is). If SSRN is being used for evaluative purposes rather than constructive feedback purposes, then it seems likely that people will not post their "shitty first draft" up, but rather their penultimate draft, or potentially, just their final draft that was published.
Larry Ribstein also seems to think that SSRN can function as a vehicle for attracting feedback on early drafts.
If the purpose of SSRN ever was to elicit feedback on early drafts, a point on which I plead ignorance, that purpose was just silly. Any young scholar who posted a rough draft to a website hoping that some Harvard or Yale big shot would read it and send along comments was, to be blunt, delusional. Put bluntly, nobody whose comments would be worth getting has that much time on their hands.
Apropos of my point, Gordon Smith notes that:
The problem is that SSRN has never been good at producing that sort of feedback, at least for me. As Dan observes in a comment to the original post, "few people I know actually receive comments from strangers on their drafts, which raises questions about whether the vision of SSRN is being realized; I know I haven't. Have you?" No.
The way you get feedback on rough drafts is by giving it to friends in the field, colleagues at your school, presenting it at workshops, and so on. Not by posting it to SSRN.
Instead, I think what the SSRN founders had in mind when they talked about "early distribution of research results" was bypassing the delays inherent in submitting an article to journals and the subsequent editorial process. I've had law review articles spend a year or more at the journal after acceptance. If you plan to submit to peer reviewed journals that do not allow multiple submissions, the process can be even longer. SSRN provided a vehicle for bypassing that process and getting relatively finished and polished work product out to the world much faster than the journal process allows. This is particularly important for time-sensitive work, but is attractive for any work.
SSRN also provides a vehicle for reaching people outside your discipline. To the limited extent I get feedback on articles from SSRN, it usually is a request for additional information from somebody outside the American legal academy. Hence, it seems safe to assume, SSRN is helping my scholarship reach audiences that would not be reached by law journals.
Or, as Smith suggests:
First, it offers direct marketing of scholarship based on subject matter. This is not such an issue in finance or sociology, where the journals provide focus, but in law our most prestigious publication outlets are general law reviews. ... For current work in corporate law, I rely heavily on SSRN to supplement conferences and word-of-mouth.
Second, SSRN introduces new audiences to my work.
All of these functions argue for posting only finished work product to SSRN. Hence, if Markel intended to suggest that SSRN's original, noble purpose has been eroded by the tawdry concerns of hiring and evaluating legal talent, I think that concern is misplaced.
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