From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: On-Line Journals Archive to Add 'Science' (Chronicle of
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 14:13:45 -0500
On-Line Archive of Scholarly Journals to Add 'Science' to Its Offerings
By LISA GUERNSEY
Pack rats who have been saving back issues of Science may soon have a
reason to clear out their attics: JSTOR -- an electronic storage shed
for scores of scholarly journals -- has signed a deal with the weekly
magazine to create on-line versions of its past issues back to the first
one, from 1880.
[see a demo of JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/ --Bob S]
The digital archive will include scanned images of every page of every
issue -- including advertisements. That's more than 6,000 issues and as
many as 275,000 pages, each of which will also be searchable by title,
author, abstract, keywords, and phrases.
"It's going to take us a while," acknowledges Kevin M. Guthrie, JSTOR's
president. But within the next two or three years, he says, the
journal's electronic archive should be complete.
Since its opening as a non-profit organization, in 1995, JSTOR has
focused on producing digital versions of back issues of journals in the
humanities and social sciences. It has promised its subscribers that it
will create full archives of 100 journals before the turn of the
century.
More than 300 university libraries have signed up for access. Each
library pays the on-line archive a one-time fee of $10,000 to $40,000
and an annual access fee of $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the library's
size.
So far, JSTOR has made arrangements with 82 journals to put their back
issues on line. Many of the journals have established electronic
editions of their own, offering readers the chance to search issues
reaching back a few years. But they have readily handed over to JSTOR
the responsibility of digitizing their decades-old issues, reasoning
that they would rather put their energies into creating digital copies
of future issues than of past ones.
Back issues of 51 of JSTOR's journals are now accessible through the
World-Wide Web, including long-established journals such as The American
Economic Review, the American Historical Review, and the American
Sociological Review.
The Science deal marks the beginning of a new phase in JSTOR's
development: It will soon offer new subscription options by clustering
journals by subject, Mr. Guthrie says. The Science issues will be part
of a cluster in the general sciences. If more deals go through, he adds,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, dating to 1915, and
papers and proceedings from the Royal Society of London, dating to 1665,
will also be included.
Such texts are undoubtedly outdated, considering the pace of scientific
change. But Monica M. Bradford, managing editor of Science, says that
some researchers will find the archive useful. For example, a scientist
might want to review articles about an old drug that has attracted new
attention, she says.
For historians of science, the advantage of the JSTOR archive will be
more clear-cut. "I've been waiting 30 years for something like this to
happen," says Spencer Weart, a historian of physics at the American
Institute of Physics. "When it's on line, I'll be a user."
As for libraries' clearing shelf space once dedicated to bound volumes
of the journal, it is unlikely that they will suddenly start tossing out
the paper copies, Mr. Guthrie says. "But," he adds, "this should make it
possible for libraries to move old copies to less-expensive storage
space."
Background story from The Chronicle:
"Journal Articles Dating Back 100 Years Are Being Put on Line," 12/6/96