Providing a college-level research experience for students in jails and prisons.
Video illustrations courtesy of Daniel Longan, April 2022.
What is JSTOR? What is the Access in Prison initiative?
JSTOR is a premier research database of peer-reviewed scholarly material available in most colleges and universities in the United States, more than 3,000 secondary schools, and thousands of higher education institutions worldwide.
The JSTOR Access in Prison initiative began in 2007 to bring our library of high-quality educational content to students at correctional facilities to improve educational experiences and outcomes for people who are incarcerated. With access to our ever-growing database of academic resources, students inside can develop critical research and information literacy skills.
How much does it cost?
For existing college and university JSTOR participants, there is no additional fee for their students in prison.
For Department of Corrections or non-participating colleges/universities that would like JSTOR for its higher education students, entire population, or GED/CTE students, an annual fee will apply just like any other institution.
|
Number of sites in a prison system |
Annual fee |
|---|---|
|
Existing college/university agreement |
No additional fee if JSTOR is only available to students enrolled in the college or university with an existing JSTOR agreement |
|
1-16 |
$9,200 annual fee per site + one-time onboarding cost per site |
|
17+ |
$153,000 annual group rate for all sites within a state prison system |
While the Offline Index itself is free, please remember that someone will need to print or access the content from a licensed JSTOR account. Please schedule a consultation to review options.
What’s included?
The JSTOR Access in Prison collection contains the same respected corpus of scholarly literature available to students on the outside, including 13 million academic journal articles, 100,000 books, and reports in 75 disciplines.
Recognizing that learners in carceral settings may lack current technological skills and research experience essential for success in a competitive future, we also include resource materials to help develop the skills needed to conduct rigorous and self-directed academic research. Some examples are:
- Welcome Pack resources for administrators and reviewers
- Student and teacher guides
- Tutorials for students
Adaptable solutions for access inside
We offer online and offline options to meet the needs of higher education in prison programs and the security requirements of Departments of Corrections.
- Online Mediated access: The Mediated JSTOR option, available only inside correctional facilities, provides online access to a version of JSTOR hosted at pep.jstor.org that has been designed to incorporate the media review requirements of correctional facilities.
- Offline Index access: Available by request, the Offline Index allows students to browse a locally installed index of the 500,000 most cited articles across disciplines. College or university libraries can then print and deliver the full text of articles that students request (JSTOR participation required to access content).