SSRN receives close to 70,000 new submissions and over 40,000 revisions each year. Authors use SSRN to share their research and often submit different versions of the same paper along its evolutionary path because they may provide different value to different readers.

PROBLEM 1 John and Jane co-authored a paper. After putting the finishing touches on the paper, they were so excited that unbeknownst to each other, both of them submitted the paper to SSRN. John and Jane created duplicate submissions of their paper, but didn’t realize it until they received the submission acceptance emails. They want to eliminate one of the duplicates but don’t know how.

SOLUTION 1 Since the papers John and Jane submitted are identical, SSRN can consolidate them into one record. Eliminating duplicate records avoids confusion and frustration for anyone that downloads both submissions. The consolidated submission will have all of its downloads, citations, etc. properly attributed and will be ranked appropriately.

PROBLEM 2 A few years ago, Emma submitted an early version of her research paper to SSRN. Although the paper has not yet been published, she has updated the paper for additional analysis and more comprehensive results. She also added a co-author. Now, Emma and her co-author want to share the new version with the SSRN Community but they don’t know how.

SOLUTION 2 Emma should revise her submission by signing in to her account at hq.ssrn.com. On her My Papers page, she can click “Revise” next to the old version. Once she is finished making her changes, Emma will click “Submit Revision.” She can make her changes visible right away by clicking “Make Immediately Available” or she can wait for SSRN to process the revision.

PROBLEM 3 One of Dan’s papers was recently accepted for publication in a journal. Congratulations Dan! The publisher submitted the accepted paper version to SSRN with a revised title even though Dan had already posted the working paper version. Now, two versions of the paper are listed on Dan’s author page. Since both versions of the paper are important, Dan wants readers who visit his author page to be able to find both of them easily, but he doesn’t know how.

SOLUTION 3 To help readers find and distinguish different version of the same paper, SSRN created Version Groups. SSRN automatically Version Groups papers that are substantially the same under a single group title on the author’s public page. Version Groups make it easy for readers to access all available versions of a paper – for example: the working and accepted version, or an English and non-English version. Clicking the group title expands the Version Group as seen below:

If the automated process does not group your papers and you want them grouped, please let us know. SSRN does not currently have the ability to automatically identify English and non-English versions of the same paper, but we are happy to connect them. If your papers have been version grouped and you feel they should not be, we can easily disconnect them. Contact Support@ssrn.com for help resolving any of these issues.