Our mission

JSTOR’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education for people around the world. Using advanced technology, we bring to life scholarly materials from the world’s libraries, museums, and publishers. We make access affordable and sustainable, and provide long-term preservation, so JSTOR supports research, teaching, and learning today and in the future.

Our core products and services supporting this mission include:

Our core products and services supporting this mission include:

JSTOR platform

A digital platform for research, teaching, and learning—including advanced discovery, research management, and teaching tools available through Workspace—housing a vast collection of open access and licensed primary and secondary sources from around the world.

Smiling student seated at a library table with open books and a laptop, representing research and study on the JSTOR platform.
Content solutions

Trusted, scholarly journals, books, images and other primary sources from the world’s libraries, museums, and publishers that are affordable and sustainable, made available through innovative models like Path to Open, Reveal Digital, JSTOR Access in Prison, and more.

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JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services

A seamless solution for managing digitized archives and special collections, featuring AI-powered tools like JSTOR Seeklight for long-term preservation and discovery—with the option to share collections on JSTOR.

Historical handwritten letter displayed with editable metadata fields labeled Title, Creator, and Date, plus a transcript excerpt reading “Sir I have the pleasure to acknowledge the favor of yr letter dated 3d inst…”.
Colorful mural on a brick wall featuring stylized portraits of three historical figures, with two people visible on the sidewalk below.

Collaborating closely with our community

We work hand in hand with libraries, publishers, and educators to enhance our services, grow the scholarly record, and ensure equitable access to knowledge—today and for the future.

The latest from JSTOR

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News

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.

A hand-colored woodcut print from 1517 by German artist Hans Schäufelein, depicting Saint John the Evangelist in prison. A haloed figure sits inside a stone cell as an angel appears before him. The image is rendered in fine black lines with warm color wash, in the style of early sixteenth-century German printmaking.
Blog

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.

A large outdoor mural painted on a concrete wall depicts a sweeping civil rights and education justice narrative. At the center, a giant pencil rendered in yellow, white, and gray stripes extends diagonally across the composition, held at its base by a small figure in a blue dress. Inside the pencil's hollow tip, a group of diverse protesters carries signs reading "We March for Integrated Schools Now," "I Am Just Going to School," and "We Demand Freedom." To the left, figures march past a columned building , evoking the Lincoln Memorial, while a corn stalk and fire imagery appear below. To the right, large silhouetted figures in yellow and blue frame the scene, one with a lightning bolt emanating from their head. Scissors, tools, and fragmented shapes fill the background, suggesting barriers being cut through. The overall composition frames education and integration as acts of resistance and power. Sonnet 4.6
Blog

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.

A detailed 1735 engraving by Johann Balthasar Probst depicting two anatomical figures standing side by side within an ornate Baroque frame. On the left, a full human skeleton raises one hand upward toward rays of divine light descending from above. On the right, a flayed muscular figure, with skin and flesh removed to reveal the underlying musculature, also faces upward toward the same light. Between them hangs a third element showing the nervous system. Ships are visible on a distant horizon in the background. The elaborate frame is decorated with urns, foliage, and baroque scrollwork. At the bottom, inscriptions appear in Greek and German, both reading a passage from Job, Chapter X, Verses 8 through 12, alongside the phrase "Know Thyself" in Greek and "Learn to Know Yourself" in German.
Blog

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.

A colorful, expressionist street scene depicting an elderly woman in an ornate wide-brimmed hat seated in a wheelchair at the center of the composition. She wears an elaborate dress and is surrounded by the bustle of a city sidewalk — a yellow taxi to her left, fashionably dressed figures moving past, and a brick storefront in the background. The painting's style is bold and slightly distorted, with vivid oranges, yellows, and pinks dominating the palette. The woman commands the center of the frame despite — or because of — her stillness amid the urban movement around her.
Blog

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.

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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.

A black and white engraving from 1512 depicting three figures seated on the floor of a prison cell, their feet bound by a chain. The central figure, Joseph, gestures toward two other prisoners as he interprets their dreams. Above each prisoner's head floats a circular vision — one showing a figure carrying a basket, the other showing a figure being hanged. The scene is rendered in fine crosshatched lines characteristic of early sixteenth-century Northern European printmaking, with classical columns framing the background.
Blog

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.

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Blog

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.

Colorful mural showing a central figure with arms raised in front of a birdcage releasing a white dove, symbolizing freedom. Surrounding scenes include imprisoned figures, community members gathered together, and imagery of struggle and resilience, blending themes of justice, cultural identity, and collective liberation.
Blog

Welcome to Fair Opportunity Month: Centering the voices of people inside

JSTOR Access in Prison introduces Fair Opportunity Month, a reimagining of Second Chance Month that centers the voices and intellectual work of people inside. This year’s theme, We Learn Together, highlights writing, research, and creative work that challenges assumptions about who gets to participate in knowledge-making.

View image credits from this page
Historical handwritten letter displayed with editable metadata fields labeled Title, Creator, and Date, plus a transcript excerpt reading “Sir I have the pleasure to acknowledge the favor of yr letter dated 3d inst…”.

John Gibson. Letter from John Gibson to John Udny, Containing Information for Henry Farnum. January 9, 1850. Part of Open: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Artstor. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.18604581.

Collage showing various types of scholarly content—open access poster, book, journal article, classroom photo, and artwork—labeled as book, journal, audio, image, and open access.

Alexander Key. “Front Matter.” In Language between God and the Poets: Ma‘na in the Eleventh Century, 1st ed., i–viii. University of California Press, 2018.

Veysel Apaydin. “Introduction: Why Cultural Memory and Heritage?” In Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage: Construction, Transformation and Destruction, edited by Veysel Apaydin, 1–10. UCL Press, 2020.

Louise Lewis. Riverbank Painting, Series 7. 1969. Part of Open: Museum of New Zealand – Te Papa Tongarewa, Artstor. https://jstor.org/stable/community.27023635.

Doubleday, Page & Company. An Academic Class; A Problem in Brick Masonry; Mr. Washington Always Insisted upon Correlation: That Is, Drawing the Problems from the Various Shops and Laboratories. Published: Garden City, N.Y., Issued: 1916. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division. Part of Booker T. Washington, builder of a civilization, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York Public Library), Artstor.

The Movement. January 1970. Vols. 5–12. The Movement Press. Periodical, The Movement Newspaper collection. The Freedom Archives.