Please keep in mind that JSTOR paid almost $100,000 to digitize these files[1]. I think a lot of people don't realize that they're a non-profit organization with similar goals to many of you.
I don't think it's such a bad idea to give them money to continue digitizing works that no one would have had access to otherwise. They provide full-text search of all of their documents and undoubtedly employ programmers and designers much like yourself.
The non-profit status doesn't automagically make an organization "good". The executives of the institution still get paid and have an interest in perpetuating and growing the organization, even if it goes against public interest
I don't know much about JSTOR, but I know the IEEE (for example) can be a good bunch of sharks. In the past, they forced you to hand them your copyright for the privilege of publishing your work in their journals, and proceeded to go after you if you committed the cardinal sin of distributing your own papers through your research website. They also put your work behind a 30$ paywall without, of course, giving you a dime.
Exactly, being a non profit only means that they distribute all their profit amongst themselves as salaries or investments.
The data would be much better at the hands of an entity that keeps the data accessible and gives the authors a right to reproduce their works elsewhere. A startup which does this would be excellent.
You guys are vastly oversimplifying this whole thing. The only reason JSTOR gets access to these documents in the first place is because of licensing agreements with the publishers.
You can try and a start a company that gives it all away for free, but you're not going to be given access to any documents or you'll be sued for releasing the ones you don't have rights to.
This is not as simple as "Just throw that stuff up on a Torrent and we're good to go".
If that were the case, they would not be a non-profit. The IRS zealously audits nonprofits (except for the religious ones) to make sure that their resources are not going to the benefit of insiders. Penalties for such situations are...extreme.
>The executives of the institution still get paid...
God forbid. I hear they even pay their other employees.
>I don't know much about JSTOR, but I know the IEEE (for example) can be a good bunch of sharks. In the past, they forced you to hand them your copyright for the privilege of publishing your work in their journals, and proceeded to go after you if you committed the cardinal sin of distributing your own papers through your research website. They also put your work behind a 30$ paywall without, of course, giving you a dime.
I have yet to hear about a similar story with JSTOR, so I'm not sure how that's relevant.
JStor is not a publisher, so they don't have the same relationship to authors that IEEE does, it's not possible for them to do what you're talking about.
All JStor does is get scholarly output from those who do hold the copyright or publishing rights (for which they pay these rightsholders), aggregate it on their own platform (which has a much better UI than most of their for-profit competiters), and then resell access to others. Their prices are largely determined by those set by the actual rights holders they have to pay for the content.
Whether or not JStor is doing enough to increase public access to scholarly content (I think nobody in the industry really is), they are doing _more_ than most of their peers in the industry, and are _far_ from the worst, the most greedy, or the most venal in the industry.
I'm not saying don't pirate JStor content, pirate whatever scholarly content you want as far as I'm concerned, no skin off my back.
But if you're looking for a target as the worst or the most evil or the most responsible for inequity in and high cost of access to scholarly output, you're looking in the wrong place if you're looking at JStor -- I'd look at the publishers (not aggregators) and for-profit ones rather than non-profit ones. Google "most profitable scholarly publishers" and see what companies you are led to by following links (it won't be JStor).
$100,000 is nothing, that a single fundraising call to parties interested in the freedom of information cannot collect.
I would personally be ready to donate 100$ immediately.
And then there is the example of the Wikipedia Foundation that seems to do quite well (and could incorporate this effort bringing fund raising and software engineering power to the table)
Whining about $100,000 for such a trove of information is laughable.
The donation would cover not only his own access, but access of others who may not in a position to donate themselves. It therefore only makes sense that many people would be more willing to donate than pay.
JSTOR charges an access fee so that it does not have to waste resources on constant fundraising.
Fundraising for nonprofits is not like fundraising in SV. Nonprofits can easily spend 50% of their income on fundraising because it is damned expensive to convince people to donate.
In case anybody is interested in a quick comparison to another non-profit with a similar mission, Archive.org spends 2% of their budget on fundraising.
I am pleased to see this is the top comment. It is very frustrating to see people who completely disregard the cost and effort associated with digitizing and managing records.
And if any educational institution used torrents instead of paying it would be unethical, but some day, and some day soon, restricting information will need to stop because it must. Armies of people would be perfectly willing to do the job of JSTOR pro bono publico only needing a bit of equipment easily enough donated.
Of course earning money by itself isn't an evil thing. The bigger problem is that JSTOR is part of a system which many people have come to feel is unjust-- a system whereby the public finances research which is then put behind paywalls.
It isn't just wild-eyed hackers who feel this way. Even Donalth Knuth has commented about how little value the academic journals really provide, and how much they charge.
It is the public who pays for this system. We pay because our taxes and tuition money subsidize the research that we're not allowed to see. The government should require publicly funded research to be made available on a site like arxiv.org. It is those guys who are really in favor of open access, not JSTOR. Throwing us a bone-- some 80-year old manuscripts which are in the public domain anyway-- shouldn't obscure that.
The government generally does require that publicly funded research be made publicly available without cost. However, that same statute grants agencies the right to have such research withheld from public distribution for various reasons (though "national security" is the most popular).
I don't think it's such a bad idea to give them money to continue digitizing works that no one would have had access to otherwise. They provide full-text search of all of their documents and undoubtedly employ programmers and designers much like yourself.
[1]http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/10/royal_society_frees_up_...