ProQuest and SSRN Address Scholars' Demand for Freshest Research

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- ProQuest and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) are dramatically increasing access to the organization's working papers through ProQuest's popular ABI/INFORM business information product as well as ProQuest Central and a variety of niche databases. Working papers will double to more than 100,000 by the close of 2012 and will grow to more than 150,000 over the next three years.

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"SSRN is devoted to the rapid distribution of 'tomorrow's research today' and we're delighted to provide another efficient discovery avenue through ProQuest," said Jeff Wilensky, ProQuest vice-president, publishing.  "We're committed to a superior research experience. Adding the SSRN content to our information products improves service to scholars by providing previews of top quality research months or even years ahead of when it will be published in journals."

The expanded agreement follows some important findings by ProQuest in the types of resources most valued and used by academic researchers. Access to pre-publication working papers is becoming increasingly vital for researchers looking to find the latest research and ideas in their field. ProQuest's research with business faculty shows that working papers are used 85 percent of the time when doing active research as part of creating a scholarly work. 

Access via ABI/INFORM, widely considered the industry standard for business research, will enable researchers to discover the latest SSRN working papers in fields such as economics, finance, management, corporate governance, entrepreneurship, political science, and health. Researchers can access papers within a feature-rich environment that allows for the easy management, sharing, and manipulation of content. ABI/INFORM also includes thousands of full-text journals, periodicals, downloadable data, market and industry reports, trade publications and dissertations.

"We are excited to be working with ProQuest to expand usage of the papers in the SSRN eLibrary," said Gregg Gordon, SSRN President and CEO.  "The author is our primary customer and this relationship will help us get their research read."

The expanded agreement with SSRN is part of ProQuest's ongoing commitment to connect serious researchers with content that inspires advances in global knowledge.  To learn more, visit www.proquest.com.

About SSRN (www.ssrn.com)

Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a world wide collaborative of over 197,000 authors and more than 1.3 million users that is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science and humanities research. Founded in 1994, it is composed of a number of discipline focused research networks. Each of SSRN's networks encourages the early distribution of research results by reviewing and distributing submitted abstracts and full text papers from scholars around the world. SSRN encourages readers to communicate directly with other subscribers and authors concerning their own and other's research.

SSRN's eJournals cover over 1,000 different subject areas. The eLibrary Database contains information on 430,000 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers, including full-text 350,000 PDF's. Users have downloaded over 55 million papers since inception and currently download 10 million papers per year.

SSRN supports the Open Access movement.  Authors may submit papers for free and those papers are downloadable for free.  SSRN was named the Number 1 Open Access Repository in the World by the Ranking Web of World Repositories in 2011.

About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)

ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information.  Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world's knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms.  Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the management and delivery of complete, trustworthy information.

ProQuest's massive information pool is made accessible in research environments that accelerate productivity, empowering users to discover, create, and share knowledge.

An energetic, fast-growing organization, ProQuest includes the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary®, and Serials Solutions® businesses and notable research tools such as the RefWorks® and Pivot™ services, as well as its' Summon® web-scale discovery service.  The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.

SOURCE ProQuest