Comment by tzs
10 days ago
JSTOR didn't own the copyright to any of the material, so could only serve it under the license agreements it had. Nevertheless they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users.
A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizing back issues of journals that the publishers probably would have never gotten around to.
> they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users.
Sure, but that still only covers a miniscule fraction of US taxpayers. Plus, you have to walk in to the school, library, or other institution, instead of just being able to use your web browser at home.
> A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizing back issues of journals that the publishers probably would have never gotten around to.
This is a genuine value add, but it could have been paid for by the government directly without then having the material behind a paywall.