Our commitment as a nonprofit
As a trusted, nonprofit organization, JSTOR has made a commitment across our products and services to provide equitable, sustainable models to maximize access to knowledge.
Being an independent nonprofit uniquely allows us to operate between libraries and publishers and users, balancing their needs and interests—with the ultimate goal of providing equitable access to knowledge today and in the future.
Our priorities and approach
01
Provide affordable access for everyone
- We actively choose to keep fees low to reach more people, whether it’s our comprehensive model for journals and primary sources, or our diverse ebook models. We lead with our mission, one decision at a time
- Through the JSTOR Access Initiative, we provide free or very low-cost access to more than 1,500 institutions around the world
- With the JSTOR Access in Prison initiative, we provide JSTOR access to learners in jails and prisons
- Our free reading program makes scholarly journals accessible to everyone anywhere in the world, regardless of their ability to pay
02
Support sustainable open access content
Our partnerships with libraries and publishers help us grow open access through content and community initiatives that make more content discoverable and freely accessible worldwide, including:
- Reveal Digital, a collaboration with libraries to fund, source, digitize, and publish open access primary source collections from under-represented voices
- Path to Open, which offers a sustainable open access solution for libraries, supports the nonprofit university press community, and invests in authors, by making books in the program open access three years after publication
- JSTOR Daily, which makes scholarship more accessible through engaging articles and free teaching resources that enrich learning in the humanities, arts, and social sciences—each linking to open and freely available content on JSTOR
03
Lead the preservation of scholarship
- We have secured the needed rights to ensure content on JSTOR is accessible to libraries for the long-term, providing a trusted alternative to hard copies on shelves
- Our digital content can be readily converted to newer formats as they are developed in the future
- Digital files for the entire archive are preserved using the approach and infrastructure developed by Portico
- Our archives can be transferred to a third-party steward in the extremely unlikely event that JSTOR should ever cease operations
Advance scholarship and teaching practices
- Our faculty resource library provides comprehensive support for teaching and learning
- JSTOR Workspace simplifies research organization and citation
- JSTOR’s AI-enabled features empower students to do their work more efficiently and effectively
The latest from JSTOR
From model to practice: Evaluating Publisher Collections in academic libraries
How are academic libraries assessing new approaches to ebook acquisition, and what early signals help determine their value?
JSTOR ranks in top 1% of most accessible home pages worldwide
JSTOR ranks in the top 1% of most accessible home pages worldwide in the 2026 WebAIM Million report, achieving zero automated accessibility errors.
From jailhouse lawyer to fellow: How legal literacy at work is changing what I thought was possible
In “From jailhouse lawyer to fellow,” Joseph Sanchez reflects on how learning the law to navigate his own case became a way to support others and ultimately led to his work with the Legal Literacy at Work fellowship.
Education is My Contraband
In recognition of Fair Opportunity Month, “Education is My Contraband” traces Taveuan Williams’s journey from survival to self-discovery through reading and learning. Inside a system designed to reduce him, education becomes both resistance and refuge, offering a way to rebuild identity, confront the past, and imagine a future beyond confinement.
Restorative Justice: The Casuistic Approach
In recognition of Fair Opportunity Month, “Restorative Justice: The Casuistic Approach” brings together lived experience, philosophy, and theology to reexamine how we define justice. Drawing from their own lives inside the Colorado Department of Corrections, Robert Ray and Clarke T. Clayton explore restorative justice as a human-centered practice.
Clamoring to be Heard
In recognition of Fair Opportunity Month, “Clamoring to be Heard” shares Lisa Lesyshen’s experience navigating incarceration as a wheelchair user—and the assumptions that shaped it. After being denied meaningful work, she creates her own path by launching Inmate.com, a prison-run TV program that gives voice to incarcerated people and challenges misconceptions about disability, dignity, and life inside.
Middle Tennessee State University will move to JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services for digital asset management, preservation, and access
Middle Tennessee State University joins JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, migrating 13,000+ items from CONTENTdm to a unified platform for preservation, management, and expanded discovery on JSTOR.
Leaders and Followers
An acting workshop becomes a lesson in trust, responsibility, and shared experience. Reflecting on moments of leading and following, William Davenport considers what it means to guide others, to rely on them, and to recognize that both roles are essential to how we learn and grow.
Star Dog by Jeremy Moss
This post introduces Star Dog by Jeremy Moss, the first published piece from an Unbound Authors student, a program supporting incarcerated writers across Colorado. Moss’s story follows a stray dog bearing witness to a man’s final moments, offering a quiet reflection on presence, dignity, and what it means not to be forgotten.
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