> Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing. I agree, but

> Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing. I agree, but that's not really my concern. > How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that? I don't suggest they get the money for that. I'm more of a "let's topple the giants" sort of guy. JSTOR's survival/profitability is not my concern. The free diffusion of publicly funded research is. And, frankly, I don't care if that makes me a bad person. I feel the same way about the for-profit closed-door academic research publishing model as I do about the fossil fuel industry. :) > It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals. JSTOR can keep doing what they're doing. I have no problem with their existence. I just want to stop people from publishing exclusively in journals that can only be made available to the public for a cost. Then eventually we won't need JSTOR anymore. > Because of JSTOR, public libraries, community colleges, non-profit research institutions, and many universities outside of the top tier research universities can get organization wide access to large collections of journals for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them without JSTOR, and they can let the general public use their access for free. But it's still a cost that can be avoided by scientists boycotting the publications that JSTOR has to spend money to obtain permission from and digitize.