The Social Science Research Network, a Web site that is "devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research," is sometimes used by those in academic circles to judge the popularity of their works.
The site, which was founded in 1994 as an outlet to give authors more readership and readers easier access to the works, includes a ranking feature that ranks authors and articles by the number of times they were downloaded.
Professors said some scholars are becoming increasingly aware of their hit counts on the site, which function much like the counts on YouTube.
Authors who post on the site can compare themselves to their colleagues with just the click of a button, seeing where they fall on the researchers' academic totem pole. Out of nearly 95,000 authors and 189,741 documents, some relatively unknown authors outrank more established ones.
"I've certainly heard stories about professors when (the site) first started up who asked their students to download all their papers to make their hit count increase," said Eric Talley, a professor at Boalt Hall.
Professors said lower-quality papers with existing high hit counts garner more hits than less high-profile papers.
"It's not a great barometer," Talley said. "All you really need is a really provocative title and people will download it only to reach page three and find it's nothing."