As Professor Steve Bainbridge and others reported last May, SSRN was sold to Elsevier. 

Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t noticed much of a difference, except for an improved layout on the article pages.

After posting my American Business Law Journal (“ABLJ”) article, however, I got an e-mail that my article had been taken down. They claimed that the copyright was held by the ABLJ, which is simply incorrect, as my contract with Wiley (the publisher of the ABLJ) clearly states “The Author retains ownership of the copyright in the Article,” and the contract explicity allows me to post the article (including on SSRN) with citation. (Section 2.1)

I sent SSRN my contract and waited a number of days without a response. I then called SSRN’s help line and received an apology, but the person did not have the ability to post my article even though she said that they had received the contract and that everything was cleared. The article is now up (and went up shortly after my phone call to SSRN), unless they have already taken it down again.

The whole thing was quite a hassle, and I am not quite sure why they flagged this article.

I do generally find SSRN useful, and in the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal, but if anyone has a better alternative, I may be willing to try it.