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Submitting Papers to Law Journals: SSRN

This guide is intended to help law faculty navigate the process of submitting papers to law journals

Introduction

SSRN allows authors to self-archive working papers and share them with a broad audience of legal scholars and peers. This page includes information on how to submit papers to SSRN generally; how to include papers in either of the Michigan Research Paper Series (RPS) on SSRN as a Michigan Law faculty member; and how to update your SSRN affiliations. 

Submitting to SSRN

To submit a paper to SSRN, the information needed is the... 

  • Paper title (in English).
  • Date the paper was written.
  • Abstract/summary of the paper (in English).
  • Names, affiliations, and email addresses (if available) of all authors.
  • Copyright holder permission (if applicable).
  • Paper, if uploaded, must be in PDF format and display all authors and their affiliations.
  • Other relevant information to include:
    • Working Paper Series, if desired
    • eJournal Classifications
    • Citation, if published.

If you are an interdisciplinary scholar, particularly writing about health or medical topics, you may need to include other information about patient confidentiality, patient consent, and conflict of interest and/or funding concerns. 

 

Keywords and Subject-based eJournals

Keywords

You may want to consider: 

  • Does your abstract include keywords relevant to the whole article?
  • Did you provide keywords to SSRN?
  • Do you use a mix of general keywords and highly specific keywords or phrases?

Providing thoughtful keywords helps your paper gain notice within SSRN and appear more relevant on external search engine result pages.  

Subject-Based eJournal Classification

For eJournal submission, you can choose up to 7 subject-specific eJournals to include your paper in. Either of the Michigan Law Research Paper Series do not count towards these 7. 

The Legal Scholarship Network includes a number of eJournals on various topics related to the law or the practice of law. The submission form allows you to search for eJournals by keyword, so you may see relevant recommended results!

There may be other eJournals outside of the Legal Scholarship Network that are relevant to your paper. For example, you may want to browse the eJournals under the following research networks:

If you would like help selecting eJournals to submit to, please contact Sarah Woloschuk. There are many more research networks than are listed here. 

SSRN Author Profiles

After signing in, you can edit aspects of your profile from the page My Account or View Account. 

You can update your: 

  • First/Given Name and Last/surname 
  • Public Display first and last names 
  • ORCID 
  • Affiliations
  • Author page photo
  • Email addresses

You may also optionally display or hide your author page ranking. 

From the Affiliations page on the left sidebar after you sign in, you may choose which of your active affiliations are displaying. 

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding Scholastica, please contact Sarah Woloschuk at swolosch@umich.edu.

MLaw Repository Resources

SSRN New Submission Process for Michigan Law Research Paper Series (RPS)

This 22 min informational video is intended for current Michigan Law Faculty who will be uploading papers on SSRN and would like to include their papers in one, or both, of the Michigan Law Research Paper Series – Public Law and Legal Theory or Law and Economics.  The information is current as of July 2024. Please contact Sarah Woloschuk if you need access to our specialized submission links. 

Law & Economics Working Papers Repository Series

This series in the Michigan Law Institutional Respository houses LEC working papers shared through Michigan Law & Economics eDistributions. The versions shared in this series are for preservation and access, and corresponding versions in SSRN may have been updated. For more information, see the program webpage.