Universities and four-year colleges have an archive fee model option that provides access to all licensed JSTOR archival journals and primary sources content in a single collection. Gain immediate access to this high-quality corpus and pay your collection fee increase over time.

Mission-focused and community-supported

JSTOR’s mission is to expand and enhance access to knowledge and education for people all over the world. As a nonprofit, our policies and decisions aim to maximize impact, not revenue or profit. Our archive fee model option is part of our efforts to deliver on this mission by increasing access to content in a sustainable way for libraries, content providers, and JSTOR. With this model, full access begins at your current total annual fee, or a minimum starting fee that is 20% of the full fee, whichever applies. Annual fees increase gradually 2%-5% until you reach the full collection fee.

We consulted our participants to validate whether the fee model is the right approach. Their feedback aligns with our full journals and primary sources model and our mission by:

  • Eliminating the Archive Capital Fee (ACF) on new purchases. Part of JSTOR’s non-profit mission is to support the long-term preservation of the content in our care. We established the ACF to provide resources so that JSTOR could fulfill that promise. We have retained and invested these funds for long-term growth, drawing on them only when needed for specific preservation activities like migrating content formats to keep apace with technology. Because of the significant support from the education community over the past 25+ years, and our careful investment of those resources, we have secured sufficient reserves to continue to preserve this content in the future.
  • Making the model optional: Libraries may choose whether to opt in for immediate comprehensive access or continue with their existing collection-by-collection licenses.
  • Providing a “slow and steady” approach: Institutions choosing the model will have immediate access to all licensed JSTOR archival journals and primary source content, but their annual fees will increase only modestly to cover JSTOR’s costs and to ensure that, over the long run, all institutions are contributing similarly to JSTOR’s long-term sustainability.
  • Delivering greater impact. This model maximizes the amount of access and impact generated by JSTOR at current levels of revenue.

How the model works