On April 1, SSRN and YouTube announced a partnership to combine paper downloads with video downloads to more comprehensively measure the impact of faculty scholarship. According to a press release from Bernie Black, Managing Director of SSRN:

"SSRN’s mission has always been to facilitate scholarly communication between authors and their readers using the latest technological tools. With the explosion in the use of video as a communications device, SSRN is delighted to partner with YouTube in measuring the influence of faculty scholarly work through video. By including video downloads in our monthly law school and law faculty rankings, SSRN hopes to encourage faculty to embrace this new tool for disseminating their scholarly work."

Update: For those of you who did not click on the SSRN press release or otherwise catch on due to the April 1 date on the post, it was an April Fool’s joke.