The evolution of JSTOR and chill
November 21, 2015 2:52 PM Subscribe
The Hamilton posts on JSTOR's tumblr are great!
My local public library recently announced that JSTOR access is available with a library card. Oh hells yeah.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:06 PM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
My local public library recently announced that JSTOR access is available with a library card. Oh hells yeah.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:06 PM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
I haven't had to use JSTOR much since leaving grad school, and to be honest I don't miss it much, either. It's a great resource, but not something I would ever use except out of necessity.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:24 PM on November 21, 2015
posted by Dip Flash at 4:24 PM on November 21, 2015
nothing is good about jstor, this is making a vorcious and all consuming monster appear hip and cute. do not let it fool you
posted by PinkMoose at 4:40 PM on November 21, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by PinkMoose at 4:40 PM on November 21, 2015 [11 favorites]
They were also the assholes who pressured MIT to go after Aaron Swartz.
posted by huguini at 4:49 PM on November 21, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by huguini at 4:49 PM on November 21, 2015 [7 favorites]
JSTOR had little to do with Aaron Swartz's prosecution. Once they were convinced that he had deleted the files, they dropped the matter.
posted by schmod at 4:56 PM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by schmod at 4:56 PM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Seems like i'm going to need a non-porn tumblr for cool stuff like this
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:58 PM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:58 PM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
I really wish that I could read this, but I don't have an institutional account. Could someone share the results of their findings with me? For academic purposes only, of course.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:14 PM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:14 PM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
nothing is good about jstor, this is making a vorcious and all consuming monster appear hip and cute. do not let it fool you
Do tell - I've found it useful on a consumer level, I guess you'd call it, for some primary source stuff out of personal interest, but would be interested in hearing more about its nefarious side. The following answers a bit of that, I guess:
They were also the assholes who pressured MIT to go after Aaron Swartz:
Do tell - I've found it useful on a consumer level, I guess you'd call it, for some primary source stuff out of personal interest, but would be interested in hearing more about its nefarious side. The following answers a bit of that, I guess:
They were also the assholes who pressured MIT to go after Aaron Swartz:
MIT’s efforts to track down Swartz, while under intense pressure from JSTOR, the not-for-profit that ran the journal database, eventually would lead to felony computer crimes charges that might have brought years in jail. Swartz, 26, was under indictment when he committed suicide in January 2013.Huh:
Swartz ultimately downloaded 80 percent of JSTOR’s archive, 4.8 million articles. At one point his downloading was so rapid, JSTOR e-mails said it created “a monstrous amount” of traffic that was “threatening the website.”posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:17 PM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
The stakes for MIT were murkier. The university’s contract with JSTOR promised that it would guard against misuse, so there was some risk of losing an important library resource. And a rogue stranger poking around MIT’s network could be truly dangerous. The discovery shortly before Swartz’s arrest that his computer was being contacted from China raised passing fears of a foreign cyberattack, e-mails show, although such probing from overseas is quite routine.
Yet MIT was used to seeing excessive downloading — albeit on a much smaller scale — and some staff downplayed the threat.
“There will always be one person a semester who, regardless of intent, will write a script to crawl through some catalog,” an MIT employee wrote when JSTOR first cut off the portion of campus where Swartz was operating. The MIT worker called JSTOR’s move “draconian” and “knee-jerk.”
The result of their differing vulnerabilities, e-mails indicate, was that JSTOR was far more bellicose toward the interloper than was MIT — at least until the days right before Swartz’s arrest.
JSTOR pressed again and again for MIT to find the downloader. Some of the archive’s employees said MIT was being cooperative, but other staff members were irate at the university.
“I am sure that if they had lost an equivalent number of books from their library overnight (what 25,000-30,000 books) they would not be so nonchalant,” someone at JSTOR wrote in an e-mail.
"Hello, fellow kids, please follow our cool Tumblr! We are a library, which is a thing you like, and not a draconian copyright-enforcement organization, which isn't. No, that's totally not Aaron Swartz's blood on our hands, we had nothing to do with that, hey, check out this funny gif"
posted by RogerB at 5:31 PM on November 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by RogerB at 5:31 PM on November 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
“I am sure that if they had lost an equivalent number of books from their library overnight (what 25,000-30,000 books) they would not be so nonchalant,”
Fortunately, it turned out that the files Swartz downloaded had not disappeared! They were still on Jstor's servers! So, miraculously, it turned out that Jstor's analogy was a tendentious bit of mendacity and not anything actually real.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:36 PM on November 21, 2015 [15 favorites]
Fortunately, it turned out that the files Swartz downloaded had not disappeared! They were still on Jstor's servers! So, miraculously, it turned out that Jstor's analogy was a tendentious bit of mendacity and not anything actually real.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:36 PM on November 21, 2015 [15 favorites]
I wish the arXiv had a cool tumblr
posted by bergamot and vetiver at 5:55 PM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by bergamot and vetiver at 5:55 PM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Hello, fellow kids, please follow our cool Tumblr! We are a library, which is a thing you like, and not a draconian copyright-enforcement organization, which isn't.
It really, really, is not a draconian copyright-enforcement organization, and actually is a great good thing for researchers, some of whom are at schools whose libraries don't have back issues of every relevant journal going back to god only knows when. Yes: it would be nice if the articles on jstor were even more widely available, but you know what? Jstor makes them a lot more available than they'd otherwise have been. (And jstor isn't the same thing as the journals whose underlying policies prevent keep research out of the public's hands.)
posted by kenko at 6:01 PM on November 21, 2015 [10 favorites]
It really, really, is not a draconian copyright-enforcement organization, and actually is a great good thing for researchers, some of whom are at schools whose libraries don't have back issues of every relevant journal going back to god only knows when. Yes: it would be nice if the articles on jstor were even more widely available, but you know what? Jstor makes them a lot more available than they'd otherwise have been. (And jstor isn't the same thing as the journals whose underlying policies prevent keep research out of the public's hands.)
posted by kenko at 6:01 PM on November 21, 2015 [10 favorites]
In 2010, JSTOR merged with Ithaka, to emerge as the fully capitalized ITHAKA. Here's their 2013 990 which shows that in that year, they were sitting on over $150,000,000 in assets. In spite of that, they haven't reduced prices to libraries or what they charge non-profit publishers to distribute on their platform. Among the platforms that non-profit publishers (like the one I work for) use to host their content, they have some of the highest charges—higher than many for-profit platforms—and they keep for themselves significantly more of the revenues they receive when compared to what a true mission-based platform like Project Muse does. And their management pays itself obscene salaries. They started out brilliantly and did great work in their early years, but I sincerely think they've since lost their way.
Here's the humble bio of ITHAKA's President, Kevin Guthrie:
Kevin M. Guthrie is an executive and entrepreneur with expertise in higher education technology and not-for-profit management. Kevin was the founding president of JSTOR (1995) and Ithaka (2004), and oversaw their merger in 2010 to form ITHAKA.
Previously Kevin started his own software development company that served the needs of college and professional football teams, and later served as a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he authored The New York Historical Society: Lessons from One Nonprofit's Long Struggle for Survival (Jossey Bass). His diverse background also includes experience as a professional football player, a sports broadcaster and producer, and a consultant for an Oscar-winning motion picture.
His salary in 2013 was $398,685. Laura Brown, JSTOR's director in 2013, was paid $327,453.
IMHO, they have forgotten their mission and treat their non-profit status as a PR leveraging tool. They are like a "non-profit" Google that now has a critical mass of scholarship that they seem hell-bent on exploiting.
posted by Toekneesan at 6:30 PM on November 21, 2015 [12 favorites]
Here's the humble bio of ITHAKA's President, Kevin Guthrie:
Kevin M. Guthrie is an executive and entrepreneur with expertise in higher education technology and not-for-profit management. Kevin was the founding president of JSTOR (1995) and Ithaka (2004), and oversaw their merger in 2010 to form ITHAKA.
Previously Kevin started his own software development company that served the needs of college and professional football teams, and later served as a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he authored The New York Historical Society: Lessons from One Nonprofit's Long Struggle for Survival (Jossey Bass). His diverse background also includes experience as a professional football player, a sports broadcaster and producer, and a consultant for an Oscar-winning motion picture.
His salary in 2013 was $398,685. Laura Brown, JSTOR's director in 2013, was paid $327,453.
IMHO, they have forgotten their mission and treat their non-profit status as a PR leveraging tool. They are like a "non-profit" Google that now has a critical mass of scholarship that they seem hell-bent on exploiting.
posted by Toekneesan at 6:30 PM on November 21, 2015 [12 favorites]
The result of their differing vulnerabilities, e-mails indicate, was that JSTOR was far more bellicose toward the interloper than was MIT — at least until the days right before Swartz’s arrest.
Once he was arrested, it was no longer an IT matter, judged by IT personnel, but a legal one.
Do you know the people in your employer's/school's legal department? Probably not, since not knowing the people in legal is a hallmark of a successful employee.. Well, then you have no idea if their notion of your institution's best interests matches yours.
posted by ocschwar at 8:13 PM on November 21, 2015
The statement JSTOR made on the Aaron Swartz prosecution is still on their website:
Even as we work to increase access, usage, and the impact of scholarship, we must also be responsible stewards of this content. We monitor usage to guard against unauthorized use of the material in JSTOR, which is how we became aware of this particular incident.
"Unauthorized use"? Of an academic journal? Non-profit or not, someone is profiting from restricting access to the journals.
Nevertheless, as Jacob Applebaum stated on Aaron Swartz day, it doesn't make sense to believe the US DOJ went after Aaron so aggressively because he pilfered a few too many academic journals.
posted by bigZLiLk at 4:17 AM on November 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Even as we work to increase access, usage, and the impact of scholarship, we must also be responsible stewards of this content. We monitor usage to guard against unauthorized use of the material in JSTOR, which is how we became aware of this particular incident.
"Unauthorized use"? Of an academic journal? Non-profit or not, someone is profiting from restricting access to the journals.
Nevertheless, as Jacob Applebaum stated on Aaron Swartz day, it doesn't make sense to believe the US DOJ went after Aaron so aggressively because he pilfered a few too many academic journals.
posted by bigZLiLk at 4:17 AM on November 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
The search function is now keyword-based and, thus, a maddening mess.
posted by listen, lady at 4:48 AM on November 22, 2015
posted by listen, lady at 4:48 AM on November 22, 2015
I avoid trouble with JSTOR by promptly forgetting everything I read in an academic article.
posted by srboisvert at 7:17 AM on November 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 7:17 AM on November 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
No, that's totally not Aaron Swartz's blood on our hands
Swartz's family seem to think that JSTOR behaved well in comparison to MIT.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 7:45 AM on November 22, 2015
Swartz's family seem to think that JSTOR behaved well in comparison to MIT.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 7:45 AM on November 22, 2015
> I haven't had to use JSTOR much since leaving grad school, and to be honest I don't miss it much, either.
Really? You and I obviously have different styles of reading. I use it frequently—I was looking up a quote there just before coming to MeFi a few minutes ago—and I'd be very upset if I lost access. Whatever one's judgment about their financial model (and I frankly don't give a shit what the top execs are paid), it's a tremendous resource. I have a lot of problems with Google Books, too, but that doesn't mean I want it to go away.
posted by languagehat at 7:59 AM on November 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
Really? You and I obviously have different styles of reading. I use it frequently—I was looking up a quote there just before coming to MeFi a few minutes ago—and I'd be very upset if I lost access. Whatever one's judgment about their financial model (and I frankly don't give a shit what the top execs are paid), it's a tremendous resource. I have a lot of problems with Google Books, too, but that doesn't mean I want it to go away.
posted by languagehat at 7:59 AM on November 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
I have such mixed feelings about JSTOR (and Elsevier and Wiley and the American Optical Society and the Institute of Physics and all the other academic publishers) now. On the one hand, the paywalling, the locking away of history and science, drives me crazy. On the other hand, they actually did the work of scanning and OCRing these gigantic mounds of paper, and they deserve to make some money for doing that.
I spent the evenings of the last three months reading basically everything that has been published about colorblindness in the scientific literature in the past hundred and fifty years. There's no way I could have done this in the pre-digital era: even with access to a good university library, I'd still be flipping through the first few volumes and writing down lists of things to request through interlibrary loan. But there's also no way I could have done it at $35 per article. It's only possible because I'm lucky enough to live four miles from a university that subscribes to all these things and that gives full access to its facilities to any member of the public for $100 a year.
Realistically, this probably should have cost me more than $100 but less than $100,000, and really shouldn't have depended on the luck of what libraries I happen to live near. But thank you, libraries! Keep on spreading knowledge!
posted by enf at 10:53 AM on November 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
I spent the evenings of the last three months reading basically everything that has been published about colorblindness in the scientific literature in the past hundred and fifty years. There's no way I could have done this in the pre-digital era: even with access to a good university library, I'd still be flipping through the first few volumes and writing down lists of things to request through interlibrary loan. But there's also no way I could have done it at $35 per article. It's only possible because I'm lucky enough to live four miles from a university that subscribes to all these things and that gives full access to its facilities to any member of the public for $100 a year.
Realistically, this probably should have cost me more than $100 but less than $100,000, and really shouldn't have depended on the luck of what libraries I happen to live near. But thank you, libraries! Keep on spreading knowledge!
posted by enf at 10:53 AM on November 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
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posted by FelliniBlank at 2:59 PM on November 21, 2015 [15 favorites]