News

User profile: Gwenaël Le Bras

Gwenaël Le Bras was a database coordinator at the National Herbarium in Paris, acting as a liaison between the GPI team and the IT department of Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (MNHN), before moving on to work on the national French portal e-ReColNat. There, he currently divides his time between H SONNERAT (botany), ARTHROTER (arthropods) and INVMAR (marine invertebrates and terrestrial mollusks). When Gwenaël told us what an impact working on Global Plants had had on his career (“Global Plants has been seeding competences in many different ways, and that's a side effect you may be proud of!” he told us), we asked him to fill us in on the details. During our interview, he revealed a commitment not only to his work but also to the continued process of learning and exploring at any given chance. Read more»

Now available: Arts & Sciences XIV

More than 30 new titles are already searchable on the platform

Dozens of institutions have already signed up for access since we announced the Arts & Sciences XIV Collection last month, and even more are in conversation with our Outreach team about starting access. JSTOR’s newest collection, Arts & Sciences XIV is devoted to the study of culture and communication. The collection supports research in Political Science, Language, Rhetoric & Communications, Archaeology & Anthropology, Asian Studies, and more. Some top titles now fully readable on JSTOR… Read more»

JPASS grows among genealogists

Among the new users now adopting JSTOR with a JPASS plan, genealogists have established a strong foothold. Often working independently, they cite JSTOR’s range of disciplines, historical depth, and reliability as valuable for their work. Thomas MacEntee, of the website GeneaBloggers, calls JPASS “easy to use and hard to stop.”

Don’t forget: scholarly societies whose publications are part of JPASS can extend a 50% discount to members. More than 80 societies currently participate, supporting scholarly research and access.… Read more»

How can data fuel discovery?

Data has transformed and personalized experience across all aspects of daily life. But what potential does it have to transform scholarly discovery? In a recent Scholarly Kitchen article, Ithaka S+R’s Roger Schonfeld examines the abundance of scholarly usage data now in existence and the opportunities and risks of exploiting this data to benefit researchers.

Read the full article.… Read more»

Linguistics journals find outlet on JSTOR Daily

Brace yourself for a humble-brag: JSTOR Daily‘s linguistics column, Lingua Obscura, has developed a loyal following. Lingua Obscura, a regular feature in the Daily newsletters, focuses on contemporary language patterns, including internet neologisms—think “stress-eating,” “rage-quitting,” and yes, “humble-bragging.”

Articles from the column have been picked up by the news website Reddit (“Young Women’s Language Patterns“), as well as a few linguistic blogs. This recent post on hip-hop was shared by the “NYT Now” app from the New York Times.

Want more articles from Daily? Sign up for our e-newsletter.… Read more»

Do online aggregators increase citations?

An article in the March 2015 issue of the Review of Economics and Statistics says that at least for economics scholarship between 1995 and 2005, the answer is yes. Authors Mark J. McCabe and Christopher M. Snyder attribute JSTOR’s importance in increasing citations to the cross-section of journals it offers, its comprehensive backfile coverage, and its relatively early genesis as an online journal aggregator.… Read more»

Promote JSTOR to your users

Resources to help you get the word out about JSTOR at your library

Want to share your excitement for JSTOR with patrons and let them know what’s available? Help is on its way! JSTOR has developed a set of resources online that support librarians in promoting licensed content on JSTOR to students, faculty, and other patrons at their libraries.

Right now, our toolkits help librarians with newly licensed content. Resources include video tutorials, posters, graphics and ads for library websites,… Read more»

Global Plants in the classroom

Part of the shared mission of JSTOR and the Global Plants Initiative is to promote awareness and education in plant sciences, environmental science, and the history of science. For those who are just getting started in their study of plants, the volume of material in Global Plants can be intimidating.  It is with this in mind that we created Global Plants in the Classroom as a way to share these materials and expose students to their possible uses. Above all, we want to encourage curiosity and exploration. Read more»

DRM-free, unlimited-user access for all ebooks

All 25,000 titles offered through Books at JSTOR are now available exclusively in a DRM-free, unlimited-user model. We decided to eliminate our single-user ebook offering late last year and have since worked with publishers to bring more of their books into our unlimited offering.  Now, all of JSTOR’s ebooks provide educational institutions and libraries with the following benefits:

• Simultaneous online access for an unlimited number of users
• Unlimited DRM-free chapter downloads that never expire
• Unlimited printing and copy/paste
• No requirement for the user to log in or use special software
• Interlibrary loan for all ebook chapters

Partner profile: Kevin Thiele

Kevin Thiele is a systematist and taxonomist with a particular interest in Australian Proteaceae, Rhamnaceae, Viola and Hibbertia (Dilleniaceae). He is currently working on new Western Australian species and other taxonomic matters in Hibbertia, but notes that as a herbarium curator, there is rarely enough time in the day to complete all that has to get done and manage to do much “real work.” So, he does taxonomic work in between other tasks. For Kevin, this time is almost meditative: “By around 3:30 in the afternoon, to stop myself banging my head on the door or going completely barking mad, I disappear into a quiet corner of the vaults and work on taxonomy for a bit – it’s a wonderful salve for sanity.” Read more»