4 ms·

> Why does the only place you can download them charge for the privilege? Because they can.

_delirium 15y ago
True, but JSTOR is supposed to be a non-profit initiative in the service of scholarship, not a revenue-maximizing corporation. It's largely funded by taxpayer money. I agree they need funding to continue their work, and some of that comes from building up an internal revenue stream so they aren't completely dependent on the winds of year-to-year grants. But I've been disappointed overall by their lack of any commitment to make more things publicly available, given their charitable mission. When JSTOR was first getting off the ground 15 years ago, many of us had higher hopes for the organization's direction, that it'd eventually be a mixture of subscription-only access for recent non-open-access journals, and free-to-anyone digitization of old, public-domain materials, like a large-scale version of Project Perseus. But nobody at JSTOR really pushed the 2nd part; they digitized old documents, but kept them all subscription-only, and never even developed plans (despite occasional agitation) for individuals to buy subscription access for any sort of reasonable price. They seem to have developed a bit of an unhealthy attachment to "owning" the JSTOR archive as their valuable crown jewel, despite officially just being custodians of it on behalf of the academic community.
- baconner 15y ago
  I was on JSTORs side of this argument until I read your comment. If its funded in part by taxpayers then the data they produce ought to be at least in part taxpayer property.
  - shadowfox 15y ago
    A (somewhat controversial) question that came up the last time I was discussing this with someone was whether all JSTOR material should be available on the net. This does mean that American taxpayer funded research is now available to practically everyone in the world. What follows is third hand information and not even directly related to JSTOR. So it could be totally wrong. But I am told that at the moment not all of the journals/articles in all areas are available to universities outside the US. Apparently it is hard to get hold of research related to subjects that the US thinks are not "exportable" because of potential impact on national security. Things like nuclear medicine, areas of chemical engineering etc. The journal publishers act as a point of enforcement in this story.
- Andrew_Quentin 15y ago
  Yet, as you say, they are nonprofit. Are they therefore actually making any profit? I guess that they are not a public company, therefore unfortunately perhaps we can not have any access to the revenue data to determine whether they are making any profit and how such profit is being used. In that case, most probably the safe bet is to decide that they are making profit. If, however, they are in fact not making any profit because their archiving and maintaining of these documents is paid off by the subscription charges, then this torrent does a disservice to science rather than acting as a liberator. Without that information however I do not think it is easy, or indeed possivble, to rationally decide.
  - cdcarter 15y ago
    Non-profit does not mena that they do not make a profit, it just means that any profits are put back into the organization instead of it's leadership or shareholders.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      Shareholders yes, though there's more gray area on "leadership". There's no law against using the revenue of a nonprofit organization to pay its leadership arbitrarily large salaries, unless it rises to the level where the IRS starts to see it as dirty tricks. I have no idea what JSTOR's are, though (or if that's even public). But I don't suspect they are pocketing the cash. My guess is that their reticence to open things is more of an institutional megalomania of sorts. Sort of what you often find at art museums--- while their official mission is to promote the arts and educate the public, many of their staff are at least as interested in building the prestige/fame/fortune of their institution, which explains why they would have weird policies about reproducing their public-domain artworks.
  - chronometric 15y ago
    Check out http://www.generalist.org.uk/blog/2011/jstor-where-does-your-money-go/ http://www.generalist.org.uk/blog/2011/jstor-where-does-your... for a great analysis of JSTOR's general revenue breakdown. The top 13 officers earn over $3 million in salaries. So while they may be a nonprofit, profits do matter to some of them.

True, but JSTOR is supposed to be a non-profit initiative in the service of scholarship, not a revenue-maximizing corporation. It's largely funded by taxpayer money. I agree they need funding to continue their work, and some of that comes from building up an internal revenue stream so they aren't completely dependent on the winds of year-to-year grants. But I've been disappointed overall by their lack of any commitment to make more things publicly available, given their charitable mission. When JSTOR was first getting off the ground 15 years ago, many of us had higher hopes for the organization's direction, that it'd eventually be a mixture of subscription-only access for recent non-open-access journals, and free-to-anyone digitization of old, public-domain materials, like a large-scale version of Project Perseus. But nobody at JSTOR really pushed the 2nd part; they digitized old documents, but kept them all subscription-only, and never even developed plans (despite occasional agitation) for individuals to buy subscription access for any sort of reasonable price. They seem to have developed a bit of an unhealthy attachment to "owning" the JSTOR archive as their valuable crown jewel, despite officially just being custodians of it on behalf of the academic community.

baconner 15y ago
I was on JSTORs side of this argument until I read your comment. If its funded in part by taxpayers then the data they produce ought to be at least in part taxpayer property.
- shadowfox 15y ago
  A (somewhat controversial) question that came up the last time I was discussing this with someone was whether all JSTOR material should be available on the net. This does mean that American taxpayer funded research is now available to practically everyone in the world. What follows is third hand information and not even directly related to JSTOR. So it could be totally wrong. But I am told that at the moment not all of the journals/articles in all areas are available to universities outside the US. Apparently it is hard to get hold of research related to subjects that the US thinks are not "exportable" because of potential impact on national security. Things like nuclear medicine, areas of chemical engineering etc. The journal publishers act as a point of enforcement in this story.
Andrew_Quentin 15y ago
Yet, as you say, they are nonprofit. Are they therefore actually making any profit? I guess that they are not a public company, therefore unfortunately perhaps we can not have any access to the revenue data to determine whether they are making any profit and how such profit is being used. In that case, most probably the safe bet is to decide that they are making profit. If, however, they are in fact not making any profit because their archiving and maintaining of these documents is paid off by the subscription charges, then this torrent does a disservice to science rather than acting as a liberator. Without that information however I do not think it is easy, or indeed possivble, to rationally decide.
- cdcarter 15y ago
  Non-profit does not mena that they do not make a profit, it just means that any profits are put back into the organization instead of it's leadership or shareholders.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    Shareholders yes, though there's more gray area on "leadership". There's no law against using the revenue of a nonprofit organization to pay its leadership arbitrarily large salaries, unless it rises to the level where the IRS starts to see it as dirty tricks. I have no idea what JSTOR's are, though (or if that's even public). But I don't suspect they are pocketing the cash. My guess is that their reticence to open things is more of an institutional megalomania of sorts. Sort of what you often find at art museums--- while their official mission is to promote the arts and educate the public, many of their staff are at least as interested in building the prestige/fame/fortune of their institution, which explains why they would have weird policies about reproducing their public-domain artworks.
- chronometric 15y ago
  Check out http://www.generalist.org.uk/blog/2011/jstor-where-does-your-money-go/ http://www.generalist.org.uk/blog/2011/jstor-where-does-your... for a great analysis of JSTOR's general revenue breakdown. The top 13 officers earn over $3 million in salaries. So while they may be a nonprofit, profits do matter to some of them.