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JSTOR 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, wh
by mjn 14y ago
JSTOR 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.