SSRN downloads rankings and blogs

I consider the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) a terrific service that, like some academic blogs, provides effective access to lots of scholarly insights in a timely fashion.  I often see important sentencing scholarship on SSRN months before it appears in print (and I’m on an SSRN advisory board).  I am especially grateful I can share with readers what I find on SSRN (unlike some stuff I find/access via other on-line sources/collections).

However, the counting features at SSRN provides another means to rank academics, and a recent emphasis on SSRN download rankings can have a pernicious effect (as Jeff Harrison notes here at MoneyLaw).  Candidly, I admit to have a self-serving reason for being troubled by rankings of SSRN download counts: I typically provide direct access to my scholarship on this blog before sending it to SSRN.  I fear that if SSRN download counts become a key currency in the academy, scholars will be incentivized to spend more time focused on how to generate SSRN downloads than on creating and disseminating scholarly ideas.

I raise these issues because, as Paul Caron and others have noted, Brian Leiter’s most recent SSRN download calculations has stirred up a bit of controversy while indirectly spotlighting the concerns about putting too much stock in download counts.