JSTOR

New to JSTOR? Learn more about us

JSTOR is a not-for-profit.
Our aim is to expand access to scholarly content around the world and to preserve it for future generations. JSTOR currently includes more than 1,600 academic journals, dating back to the first volume published, along with thousands of monographs and other materials relevant for education.
JSTOR was founded to help academic libraries as well as publishers.
JSTOR is a shared digital library created to help university and college libraries to free space on their shelves, save costs, and provide greater levels of access to more content than ever before. More generally, by digitizing content to high standards and supporting its long-term preservation, we also aim to help libraries and publishers of scholarly content transition their collections and publishing activities from print to digital operations. Our activities, our fee structure, and they way we manage the service and its resources reflect these aims and our responsibility as stewards of this content. This remains the core of our service even as we have continued to seek ways to expand access to people beyond academic institutions.
JSTOR is not a publisher.
We do not hold the copyright to any of the content we make available. We obtain licenses to preserve and make the content available from publishers, most of whom are not-for-profit scholarly societies and university presses. Our ability to provide access to others is dependent on the rights publishers hold and those they provide to us.
Our work costs money.
We digitize millions of pages of scholarly content each year, provide reliable 24/7 access to people in 150+ countries, invest in new technologies to support the use of this content, provide outreach and support for our constituents, pay license fees to content owners, and ensure the preservation of the content over time. We do this with funds provided by thousands of libraries and institutions, all of whom are our partners in spreading access around the globe.
JSTOR offers good economic value.
Our focus is on providing affordable access and sustainability. Our fee models are designed to provide the broadest possible access to scholarship while also ensuring that access is reliable and that it will be available for future generations. Fees for access vary. Larger research universities contribute much higher fees than high schools or public libraries for access to the same content and service. Many institutions have free access (see #6).
JSTOR provides free or low cost access to more than 1,100 institutions in more than 50 countries.
Some cannot afford access, but we provide it. More information is available on the African Access Initiative and Developing Nations Access Initiative program pages.
JSTOR is widely available to walk-in library users.
Every library in our network of more than 7,000 institutions is authorized to provide access to the content on JSTOR for walk-in users. Public libraries, such as Boston Public or the San Francisco Public, may provide off-site access to library card holders. Libraries may also utilize JSTOR for electronic inter-library loan, providing a way for people to gain access even if their local libraries are not among those that participate in JSTOR.
Publishers can provide access to their journals on JSTOR directly to individuals.
While JSTOR was founded to provide access to content to and through libraries, we work with more than 100 publishers helping them to provide access to the complete contents of their 330 journals on JSTOR directly to individuals, some as a benefit of society membership and some for a fee. In addition, approximately 850 journals also have single articles for sale through JSTOR. Fees for those articles represent a price set by the publisher plus a flat fee to cover JSTOR’s costs for providing the service.
JSTOR is working to expand access options for individuals.
In September 2011, we introduced free Early Journal Content, which made nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals available to the public on the JSTOR platform. Most recently, we announced Register & Read, a new, experimental program to offer free, read-online access to anyone who registers for a MyJSTOR account. We will continue to work with the publishers who own this content to offer additional options in the future.
JSTOR does not ask for exclusive rights to the content on the platform
Our licenses from publishers are non-exclusive, meaning that they are free to license their content to others or make it available in any way they might wish. Inclusion of content in JSTOR does not impact its status under copyright law. Even though JSTOR charges fees for access to some public domain content in order to cover costs of providing access to it for the long-term, public domain content remains in the public domain. People can freely undertake their own digitization of these works. Google, for example, has digitized and makes available some of the same public domain content also available from JSTOR. So do others.