JSTOR

• 1. Founding And Early Development

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  William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, founded JSTOR in 1994. The project began as a solution to the physical and financial strain on research libraries. Most universities found it prohibitively expensive to maintain comprehensive journal collections due to rising costs and limited shelf space. By digitizing back issues, JSTOR allowed institutions to outsource storage while ensuring long-term availability. Ira Fuchs, Princeton's vice president for Computing and Information Technology, convinced Bowen that CD-ROMs were outdated. He argued that network distribution would eliminate redundancy and increase accessibility across campus networks like BITNET and the Internet. JSTOR initiated operations in 1995 at seven different library sites with ten economics and history journals. Special software was developed to make images and graphs clear and readable for online viewing.

• 2. Organizational Evolution And Mergers

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  Until January 2009, JSTOR operated as an independent nonprofit organization with offices in New York City and Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided initial funding for the project. In 2003, Ithaka Harbors, Inc. was established as another nonprofit dedicated to helping academic communities use advancing information technologies. That same year, JSTOR merged with Ithaka Harbors, Inc., transitioning from independence to becoming part of this larger entity. By 2019, JSTOR reported revenue of $79 million. This financial growth reflected its expanding role within the global academic infrastructure. The merger marked a shift toward sustainability through broader organizational support rather than relying solely on individual library subscriptions or foundation grants.

• 3. Content Expansion And Specialized Collections

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  JSTOR content is now provided by more than 900 publishers and spans over 75 disciplines. Each object carries a unique integer identifier starting at one to create stable URLs for citation purposes. In November 2012, the Books at JSTOR program launched adding 15,000 current and backlist titles linked with reviews and journal citations. JSTOR Plant Science offers access to plant type specimens, taxonomic structures, and scientific literature aimed at botany and ecology researchers. Two partner networks contribute materials: the African Plants Initiative focusing on flora from Africa and the Latin American Plants Initiative contributing plants from Latin America. Reveal Digital hosts documents about underground, marginalized, and dissenting 20th century communities including zines, prison newspapers, AIDS art, black civil rights materials, and white supremacy archives. These specialized collections reflect efforts to preserve diverse voices beyond traditional academic publishing channels.

• 4. The Aaron Swartz Legal Controversy

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  In late 2010 and early 2011, Aaron Swartz used MIT's data network to bulk-download substantial portions of JSTOR's collection. A video camera was placed in the room to film him while the computer remained untouched until identification occurred. JSTOR reached a settlement in June 2011 where Swartz surrendered the downloaded data instead of facing a civil lawsuit. Federal authorities charged him months later with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information, and recklessly damaging protected computers. Prosecutors claimed he intended to make papers available via P2P file-sharing sites. Swartz pleaded not guilty and was released on $100,000 bail. In September 2012, U.S. attorneys increased charges from four to thirteen with possible penalties of 35 years in prison and $1 million fines. The case remained pending when Swartz died by suicide in January 2013 at age 26.

• 5. Access Models And The Moving Wall

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  Most journals on JSTOR are controlled by a moving wall delay between current volumes and those available online. This period usually spans three to five years as agreed upon between JSTOR and publishers. Publishers may request changes or discontinuation of coverage entirely. Some agreements still use fixed walls after which no new volumes are added. Beginning the 6th of September 2011, public domain content became freely available through the Early Journal Content program covering about 6% of total holdings. Over 500,000 documents from more than 200 journals published before 1923 in the United States and before 1870 elsewhere were included. Register & Read launched in January 2012 offering limited free access allowing registered users to read up to six articles monthly without printing or downloading PDFs. By January 2013, this pilot expanded from 76 publishers to include approximately 1,200 journals from over 700 publishers.

• 6. Usage Trends And Research Applications

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  In 2012, JSTOR users performed nearly 152 million searches with more than 113 million article views and 73.5 million downloads. The database serves as a resource for linguistics research investigating language trends over time. Scholars have used it to analyze gender differences and inequities in scholarly publishing revealing that men predominate in prestigious first and last author positions while women remain significantly underrepresented as single-authored paper writers. As of 2020, metadata identifies nearly 3 million works hosted by JSTOR as toll access compared to over 200,000 available through third-party open repositories. More than 8,000 institutions across 160 countries had access by 2013. Every year JSTOR blocks 150 million attempts by non-subscribers trying to read restricted articles.