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Afaict JSTOR makes public-domain works available on pretty similar terms as Google Books. They both make the works available free to the public (see http://abou
by mjn 14y ago
Afaict JSTOR makes public-domain works available on pretty similar terms as Google Books. They both make the works available free to the public (see http://about.jstor.org/service/early-journal-content http://about.jstor.org/service/early-journal-content), but they: 1) request that you don't remove their watermark/attribution; and 2) block mass downloading. I'd prefer a fully open, mass-download-ok option, but Google Books doesn't allow that either, and I don't see people railing against Google Books's lack of openness.
JSTOR's non-public-domain works are a different story, but the journals are the most to blame for that; JSTOR is just a licensee. Pretty similar to Google Books in that case, too (Google will only let you see a "restricted preview" or "snippet view", depending on the work, because they don't own the copyright).
- visarga 14y agoJSTOR is a public domain exploiter. They milk it for money. Once we get a copy of the papers, we could distribute them free of charge. I'd like a more altruistic host for this content.
- mjn 14y agoJSTOR does distribute the public-domain papers free of charge. It's the post-1923 papers, which are copyrighted and which JSTOR doesn't own the copyright to, which are paywalled. I do think they could be more aggressively pro-access, but they're slowly moving in the right direction. That's not to say there can't be other scanning projects that aim to do a superior job, and I'd probably volunteer if there were a way I could be useful to such a project (I've spent some time at Distributed Proofreaders). But I don't see JSTOR as exceptionally evil, at least any more than Google Books is. Both are bringing more content online, in ways that are partly good and partly flawed.
- praxeologist 14y agoI don't remember ever landing at JSTOR and seeing a whole paper available free of charge. Every time it was asking for money.
- mjn 14y agoWas it a paper old enough to be in the public domain? I just did some spot-checking, and everything I've checked that's old enough is available with no paywall. For example, looking at the American Journal of Archaeology (http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=amerjarch http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=amer...), the issues from 1922 and earlier show up for me as free, while the 1923-and-later issues are paywalled. It's absurd that copyrights are so lengthy that 1923 is the cutoff point, but that's a whole other can of worms.
- Permit 14y agoShow an example please.
- anonymouz 14y ago> JSTOR's non-public-domain works are a different story, but the journals are the most to blame for that; JSTOR is just a licensee. Indeed, every time I see a publisher offering me an article from the 1920s or 1930s as a digital download for a small fee of around, oh, say, $30, my heart is filled with contempt for this attempt of milking every last cent out of every paper.