Yesterday Brian Frye (@brianlfrye) (Kentucky) tweeted:
I am sad. @SSRN has decided that my article about Gremlins (1984), "In re Patentability of the Peltzer Inventions," does not qualify for "public" status because it is "opinion, advocacy, or satire." Why judge? Oh well. You can still download it here: http://www.ssrn.com/abstrac_id=3371989.
I followed Brian's direct link to the piece. The abstract refers refers to the many inventions of the movie's Randall Peltzer character, and explains, "This essay takes the form of an opinion letter valuating the patentability of Peltizer's inventions." I don't teach IP, but I like Brian's work and so I downloaded the essay. It struck me as funny and as an excellent teaching tool. But if you go to Brian's author page on SSRN, you wouldn't be able to access the paper. You wouldn't even see it.
I myself have posted material that apparently doesn't meet SSRN's criteria for a "scholarly paper," including this interview with the principal drafter of some important state trust legislation (and the interview itself has been cited in subsequent scholarship) and this short piece for Tax Notes reviewing estate and gift tax law review articles published in 2016 (even though SSRN published my similar pieces reviewing scholarship for the years 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010).
When I posted my Information for Submitting to Online Law Review Companions (a submission guide modeled after Nancy Levit and Allen Rostron's useful Law Review Submission Guide), SSRN reviewer "TyD" responded:
We have accepted your paper to appear in the "Other Papers" section of your Author Page, which is where opinion, advocacy and satirical papers are displayed as per SSRN policy. It will not be searchable by the SSRN eLibrary search engine but will be searchable by public search engines, and you may share the URL.
I asked SSRN for reconsideration, and got this from SSRN reviewer "Katie M":
We have recently reviewed your submission to SSRN. Our classifiers have determined that this submission is very useful information, however would still be considered non-scholarly. Because of our acceptance of your previous paper 1019029 [the Levit/Rostron paper, which isn't "my" paper -- BC], we have made the decision to allow the public viewing of this paper. In the future, similar submissions will be processed to appear in the "Other Papers" section of your Author Page, which is where submissions that are not full scholarly research papers (including submissions such as data tables, summary book reviews, opinion, advocacy and satirical papers) are displayed as per SSRN policy.
I don't even bother thinking that Information for Submitting to Specialty Law Reviews and Journals in Gender, Women & Sexuality will be a searchable public paper.
So what exactly are SSRN's rules for what is "publicly available" and what is not? What I could find appears below the fold.
Continue reading "@SSRN and the (Arbitrary) Determination of "Scholarly" Merit" »
Recent Comments