Tuesday, March 17, 2009
SSRN's Most Downloaded Labor and Employment Law Faculty
I realize that this list is controversial (see prior posts and comments here and here), but because SSRN downloads are one measure of publishing success, some information on the numbers can tell us who is using SSRN to post work, and who is being read by those who download from SSRN. It's some indication of who is doing some pretty interesting work.
These rankings are taken from the SSRN Top 1,500 Law Authors list, updated of March 14, 2009, and the criteria for selection were inclusion in that list, along with current teaching and writing in the field of Labor and Employment Law. Let me know in the comments if we missed anybody.
|
Labor & Employment Faculty Rankings by SSRN Downloads |
||||
|
Labor
Faculty (School) |
L&E
Rank |
L&E
Rank |
||
|
Levit,
Nancy (UMKC) |
1 |
73 |
4 |
298 |
|
Long,
Alex (Tennesee) |
2 |
99 |
9 |
417 |
|
Bales,
Richard (N. Ky. Chase) |
3 |
127 |
1 |
148 |
|
Secunda,
Paul (Marquette) |
4 |
158 |
11 |
478 |
|
Stone,
Katherine (UCLA) |
5 |
271 |
6 |
359 |
|
Lobel,
Orly (San Diego) |
6 |
317 |
7 |
381 |
|
Yamada,
David (Suffolk) |
7 |
384 |
30 |
1332 |
|
Dau-Schmidt,
Kenneth (Indy Bloomington) |
8 |
430 |
8 |
400 |
|
LeRoy,
Michael (Illinois) |
9 |
438 |
17 |
763 |
|
Jolls,
Christine (Yale) |
10 |
478 |
2 |
194 |
|
Thomas,
Suja (Cincinnati) |
11 |
555 |
10 |
432 |
|
Dannin,
Ellen (Penn State) |
12 |
559 |
15 |
655 |
|
Rubinstein,
Mitchell (Adjunct, NYLS) |
13 |
648 |
22 |
1099 |
|
Bodie,
Matthew (St. Louis) |
14 |
668 |
17 |
747 |
|
Zelinsky,
Edward (Cardozo) |
15 |
780 |
14 |
621 |
|
Gely,
Rafael (Missouri) |
16 |
794 |
3 |
285 |
|
Gordon,
Jennifer (Fordham) |
17 |
902 |
18 |
1022 |
|
Schwab,
Stewart (Cornell) |
18 |
909 |
5 |
300 |
|
Forman,
Jonathan (Oklahoma) |
19 |
924 |
28 |
1312 |
|
Hutchison,
Harry (George Mason) |
20 |
948 |
23 |
1116 |
|
Cherry,
Miriam (McGeorge) |
21 |
981 |
13 |
581 |
|
Doorey,
David (York University) |
22 |
987 |
27 |
1310 |
|
Selmi,
Michael (George Washington) |
23 |
1039 |
12 |
547 |
|
Hirsch,
Jeffrey (Tennessee) |
24 |
1133 |
24 |
1145 |
|
Moss,
Scott (Colorado) |
25 |
1137 |
19 |
1047 |
|
Wooten,
James (SUNY Buffalo) |
26 |
1169 |
26 |
1255 |
|
Bagenstos,
Samuel (Wash. U., Visiting UCLA) |
27 |
1184 |
34 |
2052 |
|
Craver,
Charles B.(George Washington) |
28 |
1212 |
31 |
1356 |
|
Kotkin,
Minna (Brooklyn) |
29 |
1238 |
33 |
1787 |
|
Finkin,
Matthew (Illinois) |
30 |
1314 |
21 |
1076 |
|
Lofaso,
Anne (West Virginia) |
31 |
1326 |
32 |
1653 |
|
Davidov,
Guy (Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) |
32 |
1359 |
25 |
1225 |
|
Fisk,
Catherine (U.C. Irvine) |
33 |
1391 |
20 |
1049 |
|
Estreicher,
Samuel (NYU) |
34 |
1420 |
36 |
2555 |
|
Emens,
Elizabeth (Columbia) |
35 |
1451 |
16 |
742 |
|
Befort,
Stephen (Minnesota) |
36 |
1467 |
29 |
1313 |
|
Brake,
Deborah (Pittsburgh) |
37 |
1467 |
35 |
2335 |
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2009/03/ssrns-most-downloaded-labor-and-employment-law-faculty.html
As someone whose high ranking for recent downloads is admittedly a bit of a fluke, I'll join with those who believe these lists should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Last November, I used the publication of two articles as the occasion to finally open an SSRN page. One piece was a law review article that has attracted a respectable readership. The other was a shorter piece on workplace bullying and ethical leadership, targeted at an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and practitioners that appeared in a peer-reviewed leadership journal, that somehow took off and was downloaded hundreds of times over a period of several days. (I'm guessing that somehow it was posted to some site for organizational behavior & management folks.) It wasn't a deep scholarly piece, yet if you look at my ranking and nothing else you'd think I just published some revolutionary article in the Yale L.J.
Personally, I'm delighted that my work apparently has struck a chord with an audience beyond law and outside academe, but if we're looking at these downloads as indicia of scholarly impact amongst law profs, well...my example is reason to question that assumption.
I think that individually, we should be happy when our work is being downloaded by others, as that is one sign of receptivity by whatever audience we're trying to reach. But I have real problems with the increasing commodification of scholarship via rankings of all kinds, especially by the growing tendency to consider those rankings as ends in themselves. Instead, let's try to find ways to support, nurture, and promote good scholarship, period, and to get those works in the hands of people who will benefit from reading them.
-David Yamada
Posted by: David Yamada | Mar 17, 2009 9:24:29 PM