NB:  See also:

http://www.nature.com/news/social-sciences-preprint-server-snapped-up-by-publishing-giant-elsevier-1.19932

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From: Michael C. Jensen <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, May 17, 2016 at 6:24 AM

Dear SSRN Authors,

SSRN announced today that it has changed ownership. SSRN is joining
Mendeley and Elsevier to coordinate our development and delivery of
new products and services, and we look forward to our new access to
data, products, and additional resources that this change facilitates.
(See Gregg Gordon’s Elsevier Connect post)

Like SSRN, Mendeley and Elsevier are focused on creating tools that
enhance researcher workflow and productivity. SSRN has been at the
forefront of on-line sharing of working papers. We are committed to
continue our innovation and this change will enable that to happen
more quickly. SSRN will benefit from access to the vast new data and
resources available, including Mendeley’s reference management and
personal library management tools, their new researcher profile
capabilities, and social networking features. Importantly, we will
also have new access for SSRN members to authoritative performance
measurement tools such as those powered by Scopus and Newsflo (a
global media tracking tool). In addition, SSRN, Mendeley and Elsevier
together can cooperatively build bridges to close the divide between
the previously separate worlds and workflows of working papers and
published papers.

We realize that this change may create some concerns about the
intentions of a legacy publisher acquiring an open-access working
paper repository. I shared this concern. But after much discussion
about this matter and others in determining if Mendeley and Elsevier
would be a good home for SSRN, I am convinced that they would be good
stewards of our mission. And our copyright policies are not in
conflict -- our policy has always been to host only papers that do not
infringe on copyrights. I expect we will have some conflicts as we
align our interests, but I believe those will be surmountable.

Until recently I was convinced that the SSRN community was best served
being a stand-alone entity. But in evaluating our future in the
evolving landscape, I came to believe that SSRN would benefit from
being more interconnected and with the resources available from a
larger organization. For example, there is scale in systems
administration and security, and SSRN can provide more value to users
with access to more data and resources.

On a personal note, it has been an honor to be involved over the past
25 years in the founding and growth of the SSRN website and the
incredible community of authors, researchers and institutions that has
made this all possible. I consider it one of my great accomplishments
in life. The community would not have been successful without the
commitment of so many of you who have contributed in so many ways. I
am proud of the community we have created, and I invite you to
continue your involvement and support in this effort.

The staff at SSRN are all staying (including Gregg Gordon, CEO and
myself), the Rochester office is still in place, it will still be free
to upload and download papers, and we remain committed to “Tomorrow’s
Research Today”. I look forward to and am committed to a successful
transition and to another great 25 years for the SSRN community that
rivals the first.

Michael C. Jensen
Founder & Chairman, SSRN