Jun 03

Michael Giberson

Grant McCracken cries out: “JSTOR, get out of the way!

[T]his stuff is bought and paid for. It is time to release it into the public domain. Surely, there is a university server somewhere that would assume the costs. Google, I am quite sure, would be willing to shoulder the burden.

The fact of the matter is JSTOR is holding precious resources captive to sustain itself…and its ability to hold precious resources captive. This content was created by academics funded by not-for-profit institutions. JSTOR is not reinvesting revenue in academic production. It is, as I say, now self sustaining in the worst sense of the term.

JSTOR is taxing public knowledge in order to sustain its ability to block access to public knowledge.

Time to let go.

And then JSTOR came, with page images and searchable text and accessible on the internet, years and years of the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy and more.

And then I graduated. A post-doc kept me with the JSTOR crowd for a year, but eventually I was out in the private sector, and no longer good enough for JSTOR.

But somehow JSTOR should find a way to throw open its doors.

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