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JSTOR
File:JSTOR logo.png
File:JSTOR Screenshot Nov2010.png
The JSTOR front page
Type of site
Digital library
Available inEnglish (includes content in other languages)
OwnerITHAKA[1]
Created byAndrew W. Mellon Foundation
URLjstor.org
RegistrationYes
Launched1995
Current statusActive

JSTOR (pronounced jay-stor;[3] short for Journal Storage) is a digital library founded in 1995. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now also includes books and primary sources, and current issues of journals.[4] It provides full-text searches of more than a thousand journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. More than 7,000 institutions in more than 150 countries have access to JSTOR. Most access is by subscription, but some old public domain content is freely available to anyone, and in 2012 JSTOR launched a program of free access to some further articles for individual scholars and researchers who register.

JSTOR was originally funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, but is now an independent, self-sustaining not-for-profit organization with offices in New York City and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In January 2009, JSTOR merged with ITHAKA, becoming part of that organization.[5] ITHAKA is a non-profit organization founded in 2003 "dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies."[1]

History

JSTOR was originally conceived as a solution to one of the problems faced by libraries, especially research and university libraries, due to the increasing number of academic journals in existence. The founder, William G. Bowen, was the president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988.[6] Most libraries found it prohibitively expensive in terms of cost and space to maintain a comprehensive collection of journals. By digitizing many journal titles, JSTOR allowed libraries to outsource the storage of these journals with the confidence that they would remain available for the long term. Online access and full-text search ability improved access dramatically. JSTOR was initiated in 1995 at seven different library sites, and originally encompassed ten economics and history journals. JSTOR access was improved based on feedback from its initial sites, and it became a fully searchable index accessible from any ordinary Web browser. Special software was put in place to make pictures and graphs clear and readable.[7]

With the success of this limited project, Bowen and Kevin Guthrie, then-president of JSTOR, were interested in expanding the number of participating journals. They met with representatives of the Royal Society of London, and an agreement was made to digitize the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society back to its beginning in 1665. The work of adding these volumes to JSTOR was completed by December 2000.[7]

JSTOR started adding current issues of journals in 2010 through its Current Scholarship Program.[8]

On July 19, 2011, internet activist Aaron Swartz was charged with data theft in relation to bulk-downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR.[9] According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT's computer network, which allowed him to "rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR".[10] Prosecutors in the case say Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites.[11] Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleaded not guilty to all counts and was released on $100,000 bail. Two days later, on July 21, Greg Maxwell published a torrent file of a 32-GB archive of 18,592 academic papers from JSTOR's Royal Society collection, via The Pirate Bay, in protest against Swartz' prosecution.[12][13] The case was still pending when Swartz committed suicide in January 2013.

From September 6, 2011, JSTOR has made some public domain content freely available to anyone.[14] JSTOR stated that they had been working on making it free for some time, and the Swartz controversy made them "press ahead" with the initiative.[15]

JSTOR has been used as a resource for linguistics research to investigate trends in language use over time.[16]

Usage and contents

JSTOR content is provided by more than 800 publishers. The database contains more than 1,400 journal titles in more than 50 disciplines. Readers downloaded more than 74 million articles in 2010.[4]

The availability of most journals on JSTOR is controlled by a "moving wall", which is an agreed-upon delay between the current volume of the journal and the latest volume available on JSTOR. This time period is specified by agreement between JSTOR and the publisher and is usually 3–5 years. Publishers can request that the period of a "moving wall" be changed or request discontinuation of coverage. Formerly publishers could also request that the "moving wall" be changed to a "fixed wall" – a specified date after which JSTOR would not add new volumes to its database. As of November 2010, "fixed wall" agreements were still in effect with three publishers of 29 journals made available online through sites controlled by the publishers.[17]

In addition to the main site, JSTOR's labs group operates an open service that allows access to the contents of the archives for the purposes of corpus analysis at its Data for Research service.[18] This site offers a search facility with graphical indication of the article coverage and loose integration into the main JSTOR site. Users can create focused sets of articles and then request a dataset containing word and n-gram frequencies and basic metadata. They are notified when the dataset is ready and can download it in either XML or CSV formats. The service does not offer full-text, though academics can request that from JSTOR subject to a non-disclosure agreement.

JSTOR Plant Science[19] is available in addition to the main site. JSTOR Plant Science provides access to content such as plant type specimens, taxonomic structures, scientific literature, and related materials and aimed at those researching, teaching or studying botany, biology, ecology, environmental and conservation studies. The materials on JSTOR Plant Science are contributed through the Global Plants Initiative (GPI)[20] and are accessible only to JSTOR and GPI members. Two partner networks are contributing to this: the African Plants Initiative which focuses on plants from Africa and the Latin American Plants Initiative which contributes plants from Latin America.

JSTOR launched its Books at JSTOR program in November 2012, adding 15,000 current and backlist books to its site. The books are linked with reviews and from citations in journal articles.[21]

Access

JSTOR is licensed mainly to academic institutions, public libraries, research institutions, museums and schools. More than 7,000 institutions in more than 150 countries have access.[4] JSTOR has been running a pilot program of allowing subscribing institutions to provide access to their alumni, in addition to current students and staff. The Alumni Access Program will officially launch in January 2013.[22] Individual subscriptions are also available to certain journal titles through the journal publisher.[23]

From September 6, 2011, JSTOR has made public domain content published before 1923 in the United States and before 1870 in other countries freely available to anyone. This is about 6% of the total content.[14]

In January 2012 JSTOR announced Register & Read, an experimental program to offer free access to some articles for individual scholars and researchers who register. It allows individuals to read articles online, but not to download PDFs. The program initially includes access to all the articles in 70 journals that account for 18% of user demand. Registered readers can read three articles every two weeks.[24]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "About Ithaka". Ithaka.org. Retrieved 2009-10-25.
  2. ^ "Jstor.org site info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2012-08-02.
  3. ^ "JSTOR Videos". YouTube. Retrieved 16 December, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  4. ^ a b c "JSTOR at a glance" (PDF). JSTOR. February 13, 2012. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  5. ^ "Introducing the JSTOR Publisher Digest". JSTOR. Retrieved 23-05-2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  6. ^ Leitch, Alexander. "Bowen, William Gordon". Princeton University Press.
  7. ^ a b Taylor, John (2001). "JSTOR: An Electronic Archive from 1665". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 55 (1): 179. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2001.0135. JSTOR 532157. {{cite journal}}: More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)
  8. ^ "About current journals". JSTOR. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  9. ^ Bilton, Nick (July 19, 2011). "Internet activist charged in M.I.T. data theft". Bits Blog, The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  10. ^ Lundin, Leigh (July 31, 2011). "The thief who stole knowledge". Computer Crimes. Criminal Brief.
  11. ^ Lindsay, Jay (July 19, 2011). "Feds: Harvard fellow hacked millions of papers". Associated Press. Retrieved July 20, 2011.
  12. ^ Whitwam, Ryan (July 21, 2011). "Man Posts Torrent of 18,592 Academic Papers". Maximum PC. Retrieved July 21, 2011.
  13. ^ Goodin, Dan (July 21, 2011). "19,000 papers leaked to protest 'war against knowledge'". London, San Francisco: The Register. Retrieved July 31, 2011.
  14. ^ a b "Early journal content". JSTOR. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  15. ^ Brown, Laura (September 7, 2011). "JSTOR–free access to early journal content and serving 'unaffiliated' users", JSTOR. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  16. ^ Shapiro, Fred R. (1998). "A study in computer-assisted lexicology: Evidence on the emergence of hopefully as a sentence adverb from the JSTOR journal archive and other electronic resources". American Speech. 73 (3): 279. doi:10.2307/455826. JSTOR 455826. {{cite journal}}: More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)
  17. ^ "Moving wall". JSTOR.
  18. ^ Data for Research. JSTOR.
  19. ^ JSTOR Plant Science. JSTOR.
  20. ^ Global Plants Initiative. JSTOR.
  21. ^ "A new chapter begins: Books at JSTOR launches". JSTOR. November 12, 2012. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  22. ^ "Access for alumni". JSTOR. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  23. ^ "Individual subscriptions". JSTOR. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
  24. ^ "Register & Read". JSTOR. Retrieved December 1, 2012.
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Further reading

  • Gauger, Barbara J.; Kacena, Carolyn (2006). "JSTOR usage data and what it can tell us about ourselves: is there predictability based on historical use by libraries of similar size?". OCLC Systems & Services. 22 (1): 43–55. doi:10.1108/10650750610640801.
  • Schonfeld, Roger C. (2003). JSTOR: A History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11531-1. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Seeds, Robert S. (2002). "Impact of a digital archive (JSTOR) on print collection use". Collection Building. 21 (3): 120–122. doi:10.1108/01604950210434551. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Spinella, Michael P. (2007). "JSTOR". Journal of Library Administration. 46 (2): 55–78. doi:10.1300/J111v46n02_05.
  • Spinella, Michael (2008). "JSTOR and the changing digital landscape". Interlending & Document Supply. 36 (2): 79–85. doi:10.1108/02641610810878549.
  • Articles about JSTOR in JSTORNEWS
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