“In a Wikimedia blog post this week, Steven Walling shared news of an exciting partnership. JSTOR, that non-profit consortium-based database, beloved by high school and college students everywhere for its scholarly, authoritative content, will now provide the 100 most active Wikipedia editors with free access to the complete archive collections on JSTOR, including more than 1,600 academic journals, primary source documents and other works. The authors who will receive accounts have collectively written more than 100,000 Wikipedia articles to date. Access to JSTOR, which is one of the most popular sources on English Wikipedia, will allow these editors to further fill in the gaps in the sum of all human knowledge.”
—Wikipedia and JSTOR partner
January 9, 2013 – New York, NY – JSTOR, the not-for-profit digital library of thousands of academic journals and other content, announced today that the archives of more than 1,200 journals are now available for limited reading by the public. This is part of a major expansion of JSTOR’s experimental program Register & Read, in which people can sign up for a JSTOR account and, every two weeks, read up to three articles online for free.
“Step back and think about this picture. Universities that created this academic content for free must pay to read it. Step back even further. The public -- which has indirectly funded this research with federal and state taxes that support our higher education system -- has virtually no access to this material, since neighborhood libraries cannot afford to pay those subscription costs. Newspapers and think tanks, which could help extend research into the public sphere, are denied free access to the material. Faculty members are rightly bitter that their years of work reaches an audience of a handful, while every year, 150 million attempts to read JSTOR content are denied every year.”
—Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR Imprisons Academic Research - Laura McKenna - Business - The Atlantic
MIT's president has released a statement regarding the death of Aaron Swartz, who died while facing felony charges over actions he took on MIT's property.
twitter.comTo the members of the MIT community:
Yesterday we received the shocking and terrible news that on Friday in New York, Aaron Swartz, a gifted young man well known and admired by many in the MIT community, took his own life. With this tragedy, his family and his friends suffered an inexpressible loss, and we offer our most profound condolences. Even for those of us who did not know Aaron, the trail of his brief life shines with his brilliant creativity and idealism.
Although Aaron had no formal affiliation with MIT, I am writing to you now because he was beloved by many members of our community and because MIT played a role in the legal struggles that began for him in 2011.
I want to express very clearly that I and all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy.
I will not attempt to summarize here the complex events of the past two years. Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT. I have asked Professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT’s involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.
I hope we will all reach out to those members of our community we know who may have been affected by Aaron’s death. As always, MIT Medical is available to provide expert counseling, but there is no substitute for personal understanding and support.
With sorrow and deep sympathy,
L. Rafael Reif
Swartz, who died Friday, faced charges in regards to a 2011 incident where he used a laptop on the MIT campus to download millions of articles from JSTOR. The university has faced heavy controversy from the hacker world for the incident, with some in belief that the university acted in a way that put Swartz in significant legal danger. (ht @peteyMIT)
600
Thank you, 600 followers, for making this part of my job such a delight. Your comments and suggestions make me think and laugh, and there’s nothing more fun than forging new connections.
Today is my last day at JSTOR; it’s been a wonderful five years. Rest assured that the JSTOR Tumblr will remain in very capable hands. Expect more contests and trivia, pictures and promotions, updates and announcements. But we also created this blog to gather feedback, so keep liking, commenting, reblogging, and following. We love to hear from you.
After Successful 3-Year Pilot, JSTOR Launches New Alumni Access Program
infodocket.comJSTOR is pleased to announce a new Alumni Access program, which enables participating higher education institutions to provide their alumni with access to their JSTOR archive collections. This is an important next step in our ongoing efforts to extend access to scholarship to individuals around the world, and we are delighted to have the opportunity to partner with our more than 3,000 university and college libraries in this effort.
Between this and this, JSTOR can GET IT.
