JSTOR, 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. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. Its rich, multi-disciplinary Primary Sources collections bring together diverse primary source content that complements JSTOR’s journal archives. These collections include monographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, oral histories, government documents, images, 3-D models, spatial data, type specimens, drawings, paintings, and more.
JSTOR provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals. As of 2013, more than 8,000 institutions in more than 160 countries had access to JSTOR; most access is by subscription, but some older public domain content is freely available to anyone.JSTOR’s revenue was $69 million in 2014.
William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, founded JSTOR. JSTOR originally was 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. 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 journals with the confidence that they would remain available long-term. Online access and full-text search ability improved access dramatically.
Bowen initially considered using CD-ROMs for distribution. However, Ira Fuchs, Princeton University’s vice-president for Computing and Information Technology, convinced Bowen that CD-ROM was an increasingly outdated technology and that network distribution could eliminate redundancy and increase accessibility. (For example, all Princeton’s administrative and academic buildings were networked by 1989; the student dormitory network was completed in 1994; and campus networks like the one at Princeton were, in turn, linked to larger networks such as BITNET and the Internet.) JSTOR was initiated in 1995 at seven different library sites, and originally encompassed ten economics and history journals. JSTOR access 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.
With the success of this limited project, Bowen and Kevin Guthrie, then-president of JSTOR, wanted to expand 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 dating from its beginning in 1665. The work of adding these volumes to JSTOR was completed by December 2000.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded JSTOR initially. Until January 2009 JSTOR operated as an independent, self-sustaining nonprofit organization with offices in New York City and in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Then JSTOR merged with the nonprofit Ithaka Harbors, Inc. – a nonprofit organization founded in 2003 and “dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies.”
JSTOR content is provided by more than 900 publishers. The database contains more than 1,900 journal titles, in more than 50 disciplines. Each object is uniquely identified by an integer value, starting at 1.
In addition to the main site, the JSTOR 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. This site offers a search facility with graphical indication of the article coverage and loose integration into the main JSTOR site. Users may 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 may download it in either XML or CSV formats. The service does not offer full-text, although academics may request that from JSTOR, subject to a non-disclosure agreement.
JSTOR Plant Science 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) 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.
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. 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 officially launched in January 2013. Individual subscriptions also are available to certain journal titles through the journal publisher. Every year, JSTOR blocks 150 million attempts by non-subscribers to read articles.
Inquiries have been made about the possibility of making JSTOR open access. According to Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, JSTOR had been asked “how much would it cost to make this available to the whole world, how much would we need to pay you? The answer was $250 million”.
In late 2010 and early 2011, Internet activist Aaron Swartz used MIT’s data network to bulk-download a substantial portion of JSTOR’s collection of academic journal articles. When the bulk-download was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to film the mysterious visitor and the relevant computer was left untouched. Once video was captured of the visitor, the download was stopped and Swartz identified. Rather than pursue a civil lawsuit against him, in June 2011 they reached a settlement wherein he surrendered the downloaded data.
The following month, federal authorities charged Swartz with several “data theft”-related crimes, including wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. Prosecutors in the case claimed that Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites.
Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleaded not guilty to all counts, and was released on $100,000 bail. In September 2012, U.S. attorneys increased the number of charges against Swartz from four to thirteen, with a possible penalty of 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. The case still was pending when Swartz committed suicide in January 2013. Prosecutors dropped the charges after his suicide.
A disponibilidade da maioria das revistas em JSTOR é controlada por uma “parede em movimento”, que é uma acordada atraso entre o volume atual da revista e as últimas volume disponível no JSTOR. Este período de tempo é especificado por acordo entre JSTOR e do editor da revista, que normalmente é de três a cinco anos. Os editores podem solicitar que o período de um “muro em movimento” ser mudado ou solicitação de interrupção da cobertura. Anteriormente, os editores também pode solicitar que o “muro em movimento” ser alterado para uma “parede fixo” -a data especificada após o qual JSTOR não iria adicionar novos volumes ao seu banco de dados. Em novembro de 2010, os acordos “de parede fixo” ainda estavam em vigor com três editores de 29 jornais disponibilizados online através de sites controlados pelos editores.
Em 2010, JSTOR começaram a adicionar questões atuais de certas revistas através do seu Programa de Bolsas atual.
Começando 06 de setembro de 2011, JSTOR feita conteúdo de domínio público disponíveis gratuitamente para o público. Este programa “Early Journal Content” constitui cerca de 6% do conteúdo total do JSTOR, e inclui mais de 500.000 documentos de mais de 200 revistas que foram publicados antes de 1923 nos Estados Unidos, e antes de 1870 em outros países. JSTOR afirmou que tinha sido trabalhando para tornar este material livre por algum tempo. A controvérsia Swartz e torrente protesto de Greg Maxwell, do mesmo conteúdo levou JSTOR para “pressionar à frente” com a iniciativa. A partir de 2017, JSTOR não tem planos de estendê-lo a outros conteúdos de domínio público, afirmando que “Nós não acreditamos que só porque algo é de domínio público, ele sempre pode ser fornecido gratuitamente”.
Em janeiro de 2012, JSTOR iniciou um programa piloto, “Register & Read,” oferta limitada sem custo de acesso (Access não aberto) para artigos arquivados para as pessoas que se inscreverem para o serviço. Na conclusão do piloto, em janeiro de 2013, JSTOR expandiu Register & Read de um período inicial de 76 editores para incluir cerca de 1.200 revistas de mais de 700 editores. leitores registados podem ler até três artigos online a cada duas semanas, mas não pode imprimir ou baixar PDFs.
Isso é feito colocando até 3 itens em uma “prateleira”. A “prateleira” está sob “Meu JSTOR” abaixo “Meu Perfil”. Os 3 trabalhos pode ser lido on-line a qualquer momento. Um item não pode ser removido da prateleira até que tenha sido aí durante 14 dias. Remoção de um trabalho antigo da prateleira cria espaço para um novo, mas isso significa que o velho trabalho já não pode ser acessado até que seja arquivado novamente.
JSTOR está conduzindo um programa piloto com a Wikipedia, em que editores estabelecidos recebem privilégios de leitura através da Biblioteca Wikipedia, como em uma biblioteca universitária.
Em 2012, os usuários JSTOR realizadas quase 152 milhões de buscas, com mais de 113 milhões de visualizações do artigo e 73,5 milhões de artigo downloads. JSTOR tem sido usada como um recurso para a linguística pesquisa para investigar as tendências no uso da língua ao longo do tempo e também para analisar as diferenças de gênero na publicação acadêmica.