Elsevier, the scientific publisher owned by RELX Group, has bought the Social Science Research Network, a website on which academics share draft papers that have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. On Tuesday, the company announced that it had acquired SSRN, which has more than 2m users and ranks as one of the world’s most popular repositories of research in economics, law and social sciences, for an undisclosed sum.
According to Elsevier’s press release Elsevier’s acquisition of the Social Science Research Network, it has plans to strengthen it alongside Mendeley’s technology platform. It said: “SSRN is devoted to providing “tomorrow’s research today” through specialized research networks in the social sciences and humanities. We facilitate the free posting and sharing of research material (e.g., conference papers, preprints, non-peer-reviewed papers) in our subject areas. Social science papers tend to have fewer co-authors, so networking and sharing ideas, hypotheses and drafts during the research process are critical; SSRN helps authors evolve their research and communicate their results worldwide.
Mendeley is a researcher workflow tool that helps researchers organize, discover and share their research. Mendeley is also becoming a collaborative environment for sharing early results of research but is more focused in science, technology and medical fields. Its technology platform, enhanced by Elsevier’s investment, uses metadata from articles and usage on its site to develop a suite of analytic tools that directs researchers towards the best people to collaborate with and what to read.
Together, SSRN and Mendeley can provide greater access to the growing base of user-generated content, build new informational and analytical tools and increase engagement with a broader set of researchers.”
For the full story read The FT and for the press release click here