The assessment of scientific publications is by now a reality also in Italy where the national agency ANVUR supervised the first project of evaluation pertaining the years 2004-2010: this process underlined the significant differences among the scientific areas, particularly the differences between the hard sciences and the social sciences or humanities. From these differences the author takes the cue and analyzes an open access archive named SSRN which is especially dedicated to law and to economics. This archive is highly utilized in American academic environments for the storage of the publications and for the ranking’s formation both of the authors and of the institutes of provenance.