I think it is an open question whether centralized or distributed archiving will dominate. Maybe both can coexist. A good copyright agreement ought to allow both. Then SSRN can pursue its centralized strategy, and individual authors/schools can pursue distributed strategies. The bet of the law reviews, and the for-profit peer-review journals as well, is that distributed archiving is not a threat (which is why they allow posting to a personal web page), but centralized archiving such as SSRN provides is.
As long as authors keep sufficient copyright, they can use one, the other, or both. That's my goal here. Bernie **************************************************************** Professor Bernard S. Black tel: 650-725-9845 Stanford Law School fax: 650-725-0684 Stanford CA 94305 home: 650-854-6574 [email protected] cell: 650-218-0626 papers on SSRN at: http://ssrn.com/author=16042 ****************************************************************
