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
Funding stewardship, not just scanning: How Hofstra University secured a grant to build long-term access with JSTOR
How Hofstra University is turning a federal grant into lasting access—using JSTOR Stewardship to digitize, describe, preserve, and share Long Island history.
Mount Holyoke College joins JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services to modernize digital collections management
Mount Holyoke College joins JSTOR Stewardship, migrating from Islandora to an integrated platform that unifies digital asset management, preservation, and access.
Turning the Page on Path to Open: From Pilot to Program
Hear JSTOR leaders and community members reflect on key learnings, impact, and what’s next for Path to Open.
Building accessibility into every article, on demand
JSTOR is rethinking accessibility at scale by shifting from static remediation to an on-demand model, creating accessible PDFs and image descriptions the moment they’re needed. This approach expands access across centuries of materials while ensuring usability for all.
What’s new in JSTOR Stewardship: April 2026
This month’s JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services update highlights a growing network of libraries, archives, and cultural heritage organizations working to expand access to digital collections. Featured materials include photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Occidental College, a collection of mid-century Malibu matchbooks, and visual records documenting the development of Brasília.
How collaboration with Eastern Michigan and the archival community shaped AI for archival workflows
Working with Eastern Michigan University and archivists across institutions, JSTOR explored how AI can support collections processing. The project focused on generating metadata drafts and building workflows that center review, context, and archival standards.
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.
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