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PLOS is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, #C2354500, and is based in California, US.

SSRN is an online repository of scholarly research. It was founded to provide an alternative distribution vehicle for scholarly research, enabling work to be shared as quickly and efficiently as possible at the lowest cost - in effect, providing Tomorrow's Research Today. SSRN began in 1994 as one finance network; today it spans more than 60 distinct networks in health, applied, physical, life, social sciences and the humanities. The eLibrary currently houses more than 800,000 full-text papers from more than 500,000 authors worldwide. Papers are being downloaded at an annual rate of more than 12 million, with more than 150 million downloads to date.