A few weeks ago, I posted a paper to the SSRN website, Ordinary Creativity in Patent Law. This morning, I had a few extra moments to catch up to read recent articles and so I ran the word “Patent” through SSRN’s search engine. When I re-ordered them by date to find the most recent ones, I discovered that there were only fourteen results for 2010.
This seems low to me–my own paper was not among the results and neither was another paper by a colleague that had been posted in February 2010 (both have the word “Patent” in the title). When I emailed SSRN, I was told their search engine only pulls a certain amount of submissions with a specific keyword at a time.
I had assumed that SSRN’s search results were comprehensive –apparently not and it depends on the search term. Well, now I know.
Posted by Amy Landers on May 11, 2010 at 06:57 PM
Comments
It also appears that the search distinguishes between singular and plural forms. E.g., searching titles for “veteran” does not find results that use “veterans” and vice versa.
Posted by: James | May 12, 2010 11:15:30 AM
scarily, the best way to search SSRN is google and/or google scholar. Not the only site that’s true for.
Posted by: Michael Risch | May 11, 2010 8:42:14 PM
I’ve noticed this as well, however the less used Selected Works by BePress doesn’t have this problem see advanced search here:
I’ve always been confused about why Selected Works hasn’t caught on. Perhaps it’s the lack of public download counts, or maybe SSRN started earlier and cornered the market.
Posted by: Greg McNeal | May 11, 2010 8:42:01 PM
Disturbing!
Posted by: Joe Miller | May 11, 2010 8:14:53 PM