Statistics released by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) show that UNSW Law has ranked number 12 out of the top 750 law schools worldwide. The strong result also sees the Faculty rank #1 within Australia.      

The SSRN is devoted to the global dissemination of social science research and making current research easily accessible to the widest possible audience. As of March 2019, it contains more than 851,438 research papers from 432,157 researchers. 

UNSW Law Scientia Professor Ross Buckley featured prominently on SSRN’s list of top 3,000 law authors worldwide. 

The rankings system for law authors is determined by the number of relevant measures, such as downloads and citations, in the last 12 months. 

Scientia Professor Ross Philip Buckley

Professor Buckley, who ranks in second place with 26,493 new downloads, said the SSRN is the principal way scholars communicate to each other these days in the field of law.

Professor Buckley’s research focus is FinTech, RegTech and blockchain. His research on these topics has been downloaded more often from the SSRN than that of any other social scientist. 

“It is very heartening, after long years of labouring in a pretty dry vineyard, to know that well over 26,000 readers have downloaded my research in the past year. That is rewarding. One writes to be read,” he said.

He said the download numbers that are reflected in rankings give a good indication of the extent to which UNSW is contributing to the global scholarly discourse. 

“In this sense, UNSW stacks up really well. With over 55,000 downloads in the past 12 months, we are the third highest ranked law school outside the US – behind Tilburg and Oxford.”

The UNSW Law Dean, Professor George Williams, said it was gratifying and encouraging to see the global recognition and impact of UNSW Law researchers.

“The achievement of Professor Buckley is especially notable. It is a truly remarkable achievement for his publications on the SSRN platform to be the second most downloaded of any law researcher anywhere in the world.”

To be ranked, an author must have at least one publicly available scholarly full-text paper on SSRN. The rankings are updated every year.