Dear JSTOR participants and other respected colleagues -
I am writing to make you aware that, after a very productive association of nearly 10 years, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has decided to discontinue its relationship with JSTOR, effective December 31, 2007. The AAAS and JSTOR began working together in 1998 to include
Science and
Scientific Monthly, a related title that has ceased publication, in the JSTOR archive. During this time, access to the backfiles of
Science and
Scientific Monthly has been greatly expanded through the availability of the JSTOR Health & General Sciences collection at over 1,000 institutions as well as at 600 other organizations through our special programs providing the full JSTOR archive to secondary schools, public libraries, museums and institutions in developing nations. Libraries have also had the opportunity to repurpose shelf space and lower costs associated with long-term storage and access to these older materials.
While JSTOR is disappointed with the AAAS's decision, we anticipated that there might someday be publishers that would choose to end their participation in JSTOR. JSTOR is an archive, and its publisher license agreements reflect this fact. As an archive, JSTOR’s role is to provide a reliable, accessible, digital collection to library participants and their users over time. For those institutions that have access to
Science and
Scientific Monthly through JSTOR when this decision takes effect, JSTOR will continue to provide an accessible and useful archive of the preserved AAAS material in perpetuity. This ongoing right is part of all of our publisher agreements.
I want to call your attention to several key details.
For institutions that have access to
Science and
Scientific Monthly through JSTOR prior to December 31, 2007 (including those institutions that elect to participate in the Health & General Sciences collection or join our secondary schools, developing nations, and other special programs between now and then):
- No content will be removed from the archive. JSTOR will continue to preserve Science from 1880 to 2002, as well as Scientific Monthly, which was published from 1915 to 1957.
- The Moving Wall will become fixed. With the addition of the 2002 issues in early 2008, JSTOR will cease to digitize and archive any further issues of Science.
- Access will continue. JSTOR will continue to provide access to Science from 1880 to 2002, as well as to all issues of Scientific Monthly. This includes supporting persistent links to articles in Science and Scientific Monthly from online resources and web pages. As is the case today, links need to be made directly to JSTOR or through link resolvers. Please note that Science and Scientific Monthly (as part of JSTOR) are not currently indexed by search engines such as Google.
- JSTOR will continue to preserve and migrate to new technologies the Science and Scientific Monthly content under its care. Institutions can rely on JSTOR to reinvest continuously in this material, as we have done to date, to ensure its ongoing preservation, access, and use over time.
For institutions that elect to participate in the Health & General Sciences collection or various special collection programs after December 31, 2007, the collections will not include Science or Scientific Monthly.
Looking ahead, both new and existing participants in Health & General Sciences will benefit from the ongoing expansion of the collection which started in 2006 with the addition of American Journal of Nursing. JSTOR has now welcomed a total of 16 new titles to Health & General Sciences. The latest titles to join include the British Medical Journal, Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Science News. There has been no change in the fees for the collection since its initial launch in 2000, and they will remain unchanged for all collection participants in 2008. For further information, please visit http://www.jstor.org/about/gensci.fees.html.
As an archive, our time horizon is by nature very long. We appreciate the support of the scholarly community – publishers, libraries, institutions, and users – for the archive. Over 450 publishers participate in the archive today, and they have entrusted more than 900 academic journals to us. The archive is also supported and relied upon by more than 3,600 institutions and their communities worldwide. Through this support and careful stewardship of our financial resources, JSTOR is very well positioned to meet our preservation and access commitments over the long-term. We look forward to continuing to play our role as a reliable, shared archive for the growing set of materials in our care.
Should you have questions, please do not hesitate to be in touch with me or with your regular contacts at JSTOR, or send us an email at support@jstor.org.
Michael Spinella
Executive Director
