Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS), a data research platform and business intelligence tool for corporate, academic and government institutions worldwide, announced a first of its kind collaboration with SSRN, a preprint server and working paper repository, and Elsevier, a global information analytics company specializing in science and health.

The collaboration will elevate the visibility of universities and researchers conducting research across an array of financial fields.

The initial endeavor in this alliance is the WRDS Research Paper Series (RPS)—a searchable repository of all papers submitted to SSRN that cite WRDS in their work. This RPS will elevate a researchers’ visibility, increase their Eigenfactor score, and build a specialized research base for others to explore easily, thereby rapidly advancing the sharing of knowledge.

In addition, the three organizations have launched the WRDS-SSRN Innovation Award—honoring emerging business schools in North America, Asia-Pacific and EMEIA. WRDS and SSRN will present these awards to the Dean of the winning institutions at the international and regional AACSB conferences throughout the year. Winners will also receive a monetary prize and promotion.

“This new collaboration provides an extraordinary opportunity for emerging academic institutions and their researchers to highlight their important work and increase the prominence of their findings,” said Robert Zarazowski, managing director of WRDS. “The WRDS RPS creates a much-needed repository to ensure that scholars have easy access to current data-driven research, with the added benefit of increased recognition in the field. We are pleased to be able to promote exceptional research and look forward to presenting the first award for research excellence at the ICAM/AACSB conference this April.”

“We’re very excited at SSRN and Elsevier to be collaborating with WRDS on this important, groundbreaking effort,” said Gregg Gordon, Managing Director, SSRN. “Providing a new, searchable platform that showcases the impact of research conducted by WRDS database users on SSRN is a natural extension of our combined missions to advance academic research.”