We are pleased to kickoff the new Did You Know? series on our blog – the series will provide insight on tips, tricks and troubleshooting techniques for participating in the SSRN Community. As always, we want to know if you have a specific question or topic you’d like us to discuss.

Today we’re talking about:

adding and modifying author affiliation information

We often find authors of papers in the SSRN eLibrary that are unaffiliated or have incorrect affiliations. They are not getting credit for their academic or professional affiliations (the system allows for an unlimited number) and some readers have told us they won’t look at a paper if the author does not have an affiliation. Affiliations often provide credibility for the paper, resulting in more views, downloads and exposure for the research.

In addition, institutional rankings are impacted because the author is not being properly linked to the organization and the organization’s statistics do not include the author’s downloads and citations.

To be properly affiliated follow the steps below:

1. Sign In at http://hq.ssrn.com
2. Select “Affiliations” in the left menu
3. To add a new affiliation, click the “Add Affiliation” button.
4. Enter the  name of the organization (i.e. “Harvard”) and click “Search”
5. Once you find your organization, select the name or click  “See Departments” to work through the branches to find the appropriate department (it is not necessary to narrow your affiliation down to the lowest level)
6. If no match is found, select “click here” at the top of the page to add a new organization
   

Note: To update an existing affiliation, click the “Edit” button by the  respective affiliation. Make any changes following the steps above and click “Update”. Overwriting the details of an existing affiliation does not properly affiliate you with a new organization. You must select the new organization as outlined above.

Stay tuned for more from our technical support and customer service teams!