JSTOR
Encyclopedia
JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journal
s, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized
back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
. Membership in JSTOR is held by 7,000 institutions in 159 countries.
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, it was announced that JSTOR would merge with Ithaka, a non-profit organization founded in 2003 and "dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies."
, 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. 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 originally encompassed ten economics and history journals and was initiated in 1995 at seven different library sites. , there were 6,425 participating libraries. JSTOR access was improved based on feedback from these 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, 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. , the database
contained 1,289 journal titles in 20 collections representing 53 disciplines, and 303,294 individual journal issues, totaling over 38 million pages of text.
, JSTOR material is provided by 692 publishers. More than 90 million searches of the archives were performed between January 1 and July 12, 2010. In addition to its use as an archive for individual journals, JSTOR has also been used as a resource for linguistics research to investigate trends in language use over time.
The availability of nearly all 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. , "fixed wall" agreements were still in effect with three publishers of 29 journals made available online through sites controlled by the publishers.
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. 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 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 by 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.
was charged with data theft
in relation to an alleged theft of academic journal
articles from JSTOR. 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". Prosecutors in the case say Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites
. Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleaded not guilty on all accounts and was released on $100,000 bail. Prosecution of the case remains ongoing.
Shortly afterwards, Greg Maxwell published a torrent file
of a 32GB archive of 18,592 academic papers from JSTOR's Royal Society collection, via The Pirate Bay
, in protest against Swartz' prosecution.
On September 7, 2011, JSTOR announced that they are releasing the public domain content of their archives to the public. According to JSTOR, they have been working on making those archives public for some time, and the recent controversy made them "press ahead" with this initiative.
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
s, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized
Digitizing
Digitizing or digitization is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or a signal by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal...
back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of London. It was established in 1665, making it the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science, and it has remained in continuous publication ever since, making it the world's...
. Membership in JSTOR is held by 7,000 institutions in 159 countries.
JSTOR was originally funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City and Princeton, New Jersey in the United States, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, endowed with wealth accumulated by the late Andrew W. Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969...
, but is now an independent, self-sustaining not-for-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
with offices in New York City and Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
. In January 2009, it was announced that JSTOR would merge with Ithaka, a non-profit organization founded in 2003 and "dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies."
History
JSTOR was originally conceived as a solution to one of the problems faced by librariesLibrary
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...
, especially research and university libraries
Research library
A research library is a library which contains an in-depth collection of material on one or several subjects . A research library will generally include primary sources as well as secondary sources...
, due to the increasing number of academic journals in existence. The founder, William G. Bowen
William G. Bowen
William G. Bowen is President Emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation where he served as President from 1988 to 2006. He was the president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988....
, was the president of Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
from 1972 to 1988. 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 originally encompassed ten economics and history journals and was initiated in 1995 at seven different library sites. , there were 6,425 participating libraries. JSTOR access was improved based on feedback from these 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, were interested in expanding the number of participating journals. They met with representatives of the Royal Society of London
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, and an agreement was made to digitize the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of London. It was established in 1665, making it the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science, and it has remained in continuous publication ever since, making it the world's...
back to its beginning in 1665. The work of adding these volumes to JSTOR was completed by December 2000. , the database
Bibliographic database
A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, patents, books, etc...
contained 1,289 journal titles in 20 collections representing 53 disciplines, and 303,294 individual journal issues, totaling over 38 million pages of text.
Usage and contents
JSTOR is licensed mainly to libraries, universities, and publishers. Individual subscriptions are also available to certain journal titles through the journal publisher., JSTOR material is provided by 692 publishers. More than 90 million searches of the archives were performed between January 1 and July 12, 2010. In addition to its use as an archive for individual journals, JSTOR has also been used as a resource for linguistics research to investigate trends in language use over time.
The availability of nearly all journals on JSTOR is controlled by a "moving wall
Embargo (academic publishing)
In academic publishing, an embargo is a period during which access is not allowed to certain types of users. The purpose of this is to protect the revenue of the publisher.Various types exist:* A moving wall is a fixed period of months or years...
", 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. , "fixed wall" agreements were still in effect with three publishers of 29 journals made available online through sites controlled by the publishers.
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. 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
N-gram
In the fields of computational linguistics and probability, an n-gram is a contiguous sequence of n items from a given sequence of text or speech. The items in question can be phonemes, syllables, letters, words or base pairs according to the application...
frequencies and basic metadata. They are notified when the dataset is ready and can download it in either XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
or CSV
Comma-separated values
A comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable ....
formats. The service does not offer full-text, though academics can 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 by 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.
Books
In 2011 JSTOR announced the Books at JSTOR initiative, to be launched in the northern spring of 2012, of putting current and backlist books on line. Nine university presses are cooperating. The plan is to enable links to reviews and cited journal articles.Controversy
On Tuesday, 19 July 2011, internet activist Aaron SwartzAaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz is an American programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. He is best known in programming circles for co-authoring the RSS 1.0 specification...
was charged with data theft
Data theft
Data theft is a growing problem primarily perpetrated by office workers with access to technology such as desktop computers and hand-held devices capable of storing digital information such as USB flash drives, iPods and even digital cameras...
in relation to an alleged theft of academic journal
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
articles from JSTOR. According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
's computer network, which allowed him to "rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR". Prosecutors in the case say Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites
Peer-to-peer file sharing
P2P or Peer-to-peer file sharing allows users to download files such as music, movies, and games using a P2P software client that searches for other connected computers. The "peers" are computer systems connected to each other through internet. Thus, the only requirements for a computer to join...
. Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleaded not guilty on all accounts and was released on $100,000 bail. Prosecution of the case remains ongoing.
Shortly afterwards, Greg Maxwell published a torrent file
Torrent file
A torrent file stores metadata used for BitTorrent. It is defined in the BitTorrent specification.Simply, a torrent is data about a target file, though it contains no information about the content of the file. The only data that the torrent holds is information about the location of different...
of a 32GB archive of 18,592 academic papers from JSTOR's Royal Society collection, via The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
, in protest against Swartz' prosecution.
On September 7, 2011, JSTOR announced that they are releasing the public domain content of their archives to the public. According to JSTOR, they have been working on making those archives public for some time, and the recent controversy made them "press ahead" with this initiative.
Further reading
- Spinella, Michael P. "JSTOR: Past, Present, and Future." Journal of Library AdministrationJournal of Library AdministrationThe Journal of Library Administration is a peer-reviewed academic journal that provides information on library management. It is published quarterly by Routledge, and was launched in 1980. Its current editor in chief is Sul H. Lee, Dean of University Libraries at the University of Oklahoma....
, 2007, Vol. 46 Issue 2, pp. 55–78, - Spinella, Michael P. "JSTOR and the changing digital landscape," Interlending & Document Supply, 2008, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 79–85
- Articles about JSTOR in JSTORNEWS