The reference librarians at the Ross-Blakley Law Library are happy to help you find or navigate research resources. Librarians are available from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday.
Reference: (480) 965-7161
Email us now!
Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (COL) Students
Here are some general tips on posting to platforms like SSRN:
Adapted from:
Using over 250,000 law review articles published over a five-year period, Rob Willey and Melanie Knapp analyzed citation patterns and their relation to characteristics such as title length, number of authors, article length, publication format, etc. to derive characteristics that correlate to increased citations in legal scholarship. Select findings are summarized in the table below. Rob Willey & Melanie Knapp, How to Increase Citations to Legal Scholarship, 18 Ohio St. Tech. L. J. 157 (2021).
Recommendation | Details | Page |
---|---|---|
DO — Write long articles |
Top articles averaged 63 pages per article. The most frequently occurring page lengths for top articles were 68 and 66 pages respectively. 79 percent of top articles were between 36-90 pages. By comparison, less cited articles averaged 27 pages, per article and 72 percent ranged between 2-35 pages. |
174 |
DO — Keep titles short |
Top articles averaged 52 characters per title. The most frequently occurring title lengths for top articles were 27 and 32 characters respectively. Only 6.8 percent of top article titles had over 100 characters. By comparison, less cited articles averaged 70 characters per title and 18 percent had over 100 characters per title. |
188 |
DON'T — Use colons in your title |
Only 32 percent of top articles had a colon in the title. Comparatively, 55 percent of less cited articles had a colon in the title. |
189 |
DO — Write on a popular/timely topic | Articles on trending topics appear to garner more citations per article than articles on other topics. |
200 |
CONSIDER — Publishing in widely accessible journals | Limited data indicates that journals available on Hein have more citations per article than those with embargoes or not available. |
209 |
DO — Publish in a top journal |
37 percent of top articles were published in one of 2018 W&L Law Journal Rankings top-ten journals. Only 4 percent of less cited articles were published in one of 2018 W&L Law Journal Rankings top-ten journals. |
212 |
CONSIDER — Publishing with a co-author | Our data only showed a slight difference in number of authors per paper between different segments, but other researchers have found publishing with a co-author to be beneficial. |
215 |