JSTOR

JSTOR is a database that contains academic journals in various disciplines—see the subjects listed below.

JSTOR JSTOR is short for Journal Storage JSTOR was created in 1995 In this case, “journal” refers to scholarly journals on academic research topics. JSTOR was created in 1995 Before 1995, if you wanted to read an article in a journal, you’d have to find the physical journal in print or have a photocopy of the article sent to you. This database didn’t exist before then. Source: http://about.jstor.org/10things

JSTOR JSTOR is a not-for-profit, founded to help academic libraries and publishers JSTOR provides access to 1,700 journals The next page shows examples of some of the titles indexed in JSTOR. Source: http://about.jstor.org/10things

As you can see, these sample titles are all research journals—Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal of Educational Sociology, Journal of Marriage and Family, and so on. These journals contain articles of interest to researchers and scholars in these fields. These journals typically would not be of interest to the general public.

JSTOR Access to JSTOR costs money Libraries pay JSTOR for access to journals Individuals can also register for limited access The articles within JSTOR can’t be found on Google. They’re behind what’s known as a “pay wall.” Source: http://about.jstor.org/10things

Here’s an example of what you might see if you searched for an academic article in Google. Unless you access the article through a library (which pays for the article through their subscription to a database), you’ll be asked to pay for the article directly.

SHOULD research articles be available to everyone? Advocates of Open Access believe research articles should be available to everyone. Publishers believe that you should pay for access to research articles. Free & immediate availability on the public Internet of those works which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment Permit any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing… or use them for any other lawful purpose.  Source: Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) http://www.arl.org/sparc/openaccess/why-oa.shtml Most publishers own the rights to the articles in their journals. Anyone who wants to read the articles must pay to access them. Anyone who wants to use the articles in any way must obtain permission from the publisher and is often required to pay an additional fee. Source: Public Library of Science (PLoS) http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/

Aaron swartz Aaron Swartz downloaded 4.8 millions files from JSTOR. He fought against keeping scholarly material behind pay walls. Michael Francis McElroy/The New York Times

Aaron Swartz Aaron Swartz is a well-known Internet activist. He co-founded Demand Progress, which launched the campaign against the Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA). He co-founded the popular online news site Reddit. His landmark analysis of Wikipedia, Who Writes Wikipedia?, has been widely cited. Working with Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT, he helped develop and popularize standards for sharing data on the Web. He also coauthored the RSS 1.0 specification, now widely used for publishing news stories. Source: http://www.aaronsw.com

Aaron Swartz Aaron was charged with hacking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) network to download millions of JSTOR articles. It’s believed he may have intended to share the articles through peer-to-peer sharing sites (which are typically used to illegally share movies and music). He settled with JSTOR in June 2011 by returning the materials, but… He faced up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for wire fraud, computer fraud and unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer. Source: Schwartz, John. “Open Access Advocate Is Arrested For Huge Download.” New York Times. NYTimes.com. 19 Jul. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

Aaron Swartz Here are two very different opinions on what Aaron did: “It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.” – David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress “Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.” – Carmen Ortiz, US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data-theft/

Aaron committed suicide in January 2013. Many people believe that the stress of his legal situation was a factor in his death. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html

JSTOR posted this message on their website regarding Aaron’s death.

Why does this matter? You are scholars. You have the right to know how the academic publishing process works. Part of that process is the struggle between advocates of open access and publishers. Some journals are open access, but most are not. To find quality research information, you’ll often need to access databases through a library or pay directly for the articles within them. Aaron Swartz’s story gives us an opportunity to examine our own beliefs about how to best advocate for the freedom of information.

JSTOR