The Social Sciences Research Network is an open access preprint repository, but the institutional subscriptions offered through Elsevier allow for registered users to ‘subscribe’ to individual open access or fee-based journals with content hosted on the platform.
The UofA Library has been supporting an institutional subscription to SSRN since 2017. The latest usage statistics show little overall use related to individual user accounts, and the renewal for April 1st has just come in at $5,400 CAD. Given the recent budget cuts, we feel that we cannot continue to support a subscription that is not providing access to content, but rather facilitating awareness to content that is readily available to all on this open access platform.
All 225 registered UofA/SSRN users have been notified directly of this cancellation.