SSRN is a preprint server and working-paper repository, not a journal publisher. Founded in 1994 by financial economists Michael C. Jensen and Wayne Marr as the Social Science Research Network, it became the default venue for circulating working papers in economics, finance, accounting, law, and management long before "preprint" was a mainstream term. Elsevier acquired SSRN in May 2016, and the platform has since expanded beyond the social sciences into humanities, applied sciences, health sciences, and physical sciences through new subject networks. Posting is free, reading is free, and there is no peer review - papers go live after a brief staff screening.

This guide explains what SSRN is for, how posting works, what the screening actually checks, how to cite an SSRN paper, and how posting interacts with later journal submission.

SSRN is an electronic library and distribution network. Each paper gets an abstract page with a permanent SSRN ID and URL, download counts, and author profile links. Authors and papers are ranked by downloads, which has become an informal visibility metric in fields like finance and law.

SSRN is not a journal: there is no peer review, no impact factor, and no acceptance decision beyond a basic screen. Posting to SSRN establishes priority and gathers early feedback; it does not count as formal publication in the peer-reviewed sense.

1. Create a free SSRN account and open the author submission portal.
2. Upload your PDF with title, abstract, keywords, JEL codes (for economics), and co-author details.
3. Choose subject networks and eJournals so the paper reaches the right alert subscribers.
4. Staff screening - SSRN checks that the submission is scholarly, complete, and correctly classified. This typically takes a few business days.
5. Paper goes live with a permanent abstract page and SSRN ID; revisions can be uploaded at any time and replace the public version while keeping the same ID.

SSRN staff review each submission for relevance and completeness only - they do not evaluate methods, novelty, or conclusions. This means SSRN papers should be read as preliminary work. It also means posting is fast and non-selective: if your paper is a genuine scholarly work in scope for a network, it will normally be accepted. SSRN removes papers that violate copyright, and after the 2016 acquisition it drew criticism for takedowns of papers over publisher copyright concerns, an episode Elsevier described as a mistake affecting a small number of papers.

Cite the SSRN version when no published version exists; once a journal version appears, cite that instead (optionally noting the SSRN working-paper history). SSRN abstract pages provide a stable URL of the form ssrn.com/abstract=XXXXXXX and a DOI (10.2139/ssrn.XXXXXXX) for most modern papers.

SciSpace's citation generator supports SSRN-style author-year references alongside APA and Chicago.

Most journals in economics, finance, and law explicitly allow prior SSRN posting - working-paper circulation is the norm in these fields. Policies vary elsewhere, so check the target journal's preprint policy before posting, especially in medicine and some humanities venues. Authors retain copyright in the posted version, which makes SSRN a green open-access route: the preprint stays freely available even if the journal version sits behind a paywall. If your publishing agreement later restricts the posted version, you can replace or remove it.

Posting and downloading are free. SSRN's revenue comes from optional paid services - subscription email alerts for institutions and hosted research-paper series for universities, departments, and organizations - not from author fees. There are no APCs, no submission charges, and no reader paywalls for author-posted papers.

SSRN expects submissions to be the author's own scholarly work, correctly attributed, with co-authors aware of the posting. Because there is no peer review, responsibility for accuracy rests with authors, and readers should treat findings as preliminary until a peer-reviewed version appears. Plagiarized or copyright-infringing papers are removed.