Product Overview of JSTOR
Introduction
JSTOR, founded in 1994 by William G. Bowen, the former president of Princeton University, is a comprehensive digital library designed to provide access to a vast array of academic journals, books, images, and primary sources. The platform was initially conceived to address the challenges faced by research and university libraries in storing and maintaining extensive collections of academic journals.
Key Features
Content
JSTOR houses over 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources, spanning more than 75 disciplines. The content is provided by more than 900 publishers, ensuring a diverse and rich repository of scholarly materials. This includes top peer-reviewed scholarly journals, book chapters, images, and primary source materials, making it an invaluable resource for academic research.
Search and Access
The platform offers robust search capabilities, allowing users to conduct basic and advanced searches using keywords, subjects, and specific date ranges. Users can refine their searches using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and filter results by content type, publication date, and subject headings. Search results are sorted by relevance, and users can further limit their results to specific criteria.
Access Models
JSTOR is primarily licensed to academic institutions, public libraries, research institutions, museums, and schools, with over 7,000 institutions in more than 150 countries having access. In addition to institutional subscriptions, JSTOR offers individual subscriptions to certain journal titles through the journal publishers. The platform also features programs like “Register & Read,” which provides limited no-cost access to archived articles for registered individuals, and the “Alumni Access Program,” which extends access to alumni of subscribing institutions.
Specialized Services
- Data for Research (DfR): This service allows users to request datasets containing word and n-gram frequencies, as well as basic metadata, for corpus analysis. It does not provide full-text access but is useful for citation analysis and text mining.
- JSTOR Plant Science: This initiative provides access to plant type specimens, taxonomic structures, scientific literature, and related materials, primarily aimed at researchers, teachers, and students in botany, biology, ecology, environmental, and conservation studies.
- Books at JSTOR: Launched in 2012, this program added 15,000 current and backlist books to the platform, linked with reviews and citations from journal articles.
- JSTOR Daily: An online magazine that brings academic research to a broader audience by providing articles based on JSTOR entries and offering insights into current events.
Functionality
User Interface
Users can navigate the platform through a user-friendly interface that allows for basic and advanced searches. The search results can be filtered by various criteria such as content type, publication date, and subject headings. Articles and other content are available in PDF format and can be downloaded for offline access.
Integration and Tools
JSTOR integrates with various tools and services, such as the Wikipedia Library, which provides reading privileges to established Wikipedia editors. The platform also supports corpus analysis through its DfR service, which offers functions for importing and analyzing datasets using tools like R.
Conclusion
JSTOR is a powerful digital library that enhances academic research by providing comprehensive access to scholarly articles, books, images, and primary sources. Its robust search functionality, diverse content offerings, and specialized services make it an essential resource for researchers, students, and educators across a wide range of disciplines.