Increasing your Scholarly Impact (College of Law Faculty)

Submission by the Law Library

• The Law Library can add your publications to your SSRN account on your behalf. To request this service, please use the submission form or contact Rachel Ford (rford2@niu.edu).
• You will need to supply a Word or .pdf document and an abstract (if an abstract is not already included in the publication).
• By allowing the Law Library to post a submission on your behalf, you are confirming that the material to be submitted do not violate SSRN's Terms of Use.

Self-submission

• If you'd prefer to add your publications to your SSRN account, follow SSRN's procedures (PDF). Please read SSRN's Terms of Use, especially the section on copyright, to ensure your submission meets these requirements. 
• In particular, please do not upload PDFs downloaded directly from Lexis, Westlaw or Hein Online.
• If you self-submit an article to SSRN, please inform Rachel Ford, so your publication can be added to your faculty web page, Huskie Commons, and the NIU Research Paper Series.

The College of Law has a Research Paper Series (RPS) with SSRN. An SSRN RPS showcases organizational and institutional research. Exposure to SSRN’s extensive community of relevant researchers and scholars increases the brand recognition and benefits authors. Some of the key features are a customized home page to aggregate the research, dissemination of content in a branded eJournal, and dedicated SSRN support. 

If you submit your publications to SSRN via the library's submission form, your publications will automatically be added to the NIU COL RPS and be eligible for promotion through our eJournal. If you self-submit to SSRN, please still fill out the submission form or email Rachel Ford to ensure your publication is added to the RPS as well as to Huskie Commons and your faculty profile page.

Updating your title or position

1. Go to your NIU faculty web page (easiest way to get there is from the COL faculty and staff directory).
2. On your web page, click on your SSRN Author Page link. It's located just after your biography.
3. When the SSRN page loads, click Sign In in the upper right corner.
4. Enter your email and password in the left hand box. (If you’ve forgotten your password, click Forgot Password? and a link will be emailed to you to re-set it.
5. When you’re logged in, click on Affiliations in the left hand column.
6. When your Affiliation displays, click Edit.
7. Edit your Public Display Title/Position and click Update.

Updating your institutional affiliation

The procedures for editing your title and position above don't allow you to edit your affiliation. If your current affiliation is not correct, you'll need to add a new affiliation and deactivate the old one.

To add a new affiliation:

1. When you’re logged in, click on Affiliations in the left hand column.
2. When your current Affiliation displays, click the Add Affiliation box.
3. You'll be asked to search for the affiliation. Enter Northern Illinois University and leave search type as Contains.
4. When Northern Illinois University displays, click the purple See Departments button.
5. Click on the text "College of Law" (not any of the purple buttons).
6. Enter your Title/Position in the top box.
7. Leave Public Display Organization Name blank.
8. Optional: enter your phone number, email address, and the URL of your faculty web page.
9. Click Submit.

To deactivate your previous affiliation:

1. From your Affiliation page, find the affiliation to deactivate and click the Deactivate link to the right of it.
2. Click OK.
3. Your previous affiliation will appear under "Your Inactive Affiliations."

1. Log in to SSRN.
2. From SSRN User Home, click My Account.
3. Scroll down to the ORCID section of the page and click Connect to your ORCID Record.
4. The ORCiD login/password screen will open. Sign into ORCiD.
5. ORCiD will ask you to authorize SSRN to connect to your account. Click Authorize.
6. Your ORCiD ID will now be linked to your SSRN profile. (Note:your ORCiD ID is not visible on your SSRN Author Page. You need to be logged in to SSRN and go to My Account to view it.)

If you don’t have a copy of your official NIU headshot, contact Melody Mitchell and she can get one from Media Services. Or you can use another photo that meets SSRN’s guidelines:

• It must be a photo of you, the author, alone (it may include the head, shoulders and torso).
• It must be clear, professionally-appropriate and show your face (from front or side).
• Only JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG or BMP formats can be uploaded.

To add your photo:

1. Scroll down to the Author Page Photo section.
2. Click Upload Photo, then click Select photo and browse your PC to select the photo to use.  
3. When the photo is loaded, a box will overlay the photo indicating the area of the photo that will display.  
4. Click on the photo and drag it until your face shows in the box the way you want it to. (You can also use the icons at the bottom to zoom in/out or rotate).  
5. When you’re finished, click Save changes. 

What is a DOI?

DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. Just as an ORCiD ID uniquely & permanently identifies you, a DOI uniquely & permanently identifies a single article. The DOI stays the same no matter where the article resides (so even if the URL of where an article is stored changes, the DOI does not change).

DOIs are mostly used in the sciences and by commercial publishers. However, DOIs cost money to assign -- thus most law reviews don't use them.

What are CrossRef statistics?

From SSRN's blog:

“…once your paper has a DOI and starts to become cited beyond SSRN, we’ll be able to display the second set of CrossRef citations for your paper to provide a more complete picture of how your paper is being shared across the Web.”

Since CrossRef only tracks DOIs and most law review articles don’t have DOIs, don’t be surprised if your CrossRef numbers are low.