A fee model to maximize access

Our mission is to expand and enhance access to knowledge and education for people all over the world. As a nonprofit organization, our aim is for our policies and decisions to maximize impact, not revenue or profit. Our full journals and primary sources fee model option is part of our efforts to deliver on this mission by increasing access to content in a sustainable way for JSTOR, libraries, and content providers.

More than 5,000 institutions have opted for full access to all archival journal and primary sources collections at no additional cost through our pandemic Expanded Access programs, and their students and faculty downloaded or viewed this content more than 95 million times. We were able to continue to provide consistent revenue sharing to our publisher partners who were also impacted by the pandemic and are essential to the work we do. Continuing that level of access is imperative to fulfilling our mission.

As we consider what we are learning from our experience in a changing environment and ask how we can best contribute, we have identified three areas of focus: making more content universally accessible, preserving at-risk materials, and improving the utility of all this knowledge.

We evaluated many models, including Subscribe to Open, and determined they were not viable for a variety of reasons at this time. To develop this model we consulted our participants to validate whether the full journals and primary sources fee model is the right approach. Our fee model aligns with their feedback and our mission by:

• Eliminating the Archive Capital Fee (ACF) on new purchases effective April 1, 2023: 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 full journals and primary sources model will continue to have access to all of the journals and primary source content that they had with expanded access, 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: The full journals and primary sources model maximizes the amount of access and impact generated by JSTOR at current levels of revenue.

Yes. The full journals and primary sources fee model option is non-binding and institutions can choose to return to the collection-by-collection fee model before reaching full AAF for the JSTOR Archival Journals and Primary Sources Collection.

No. We did not want to impose a time limit on the number of years needed for institutions to reach the full AAF for the collection. Institutions eventually reach the same AAF for their respective classification, but the number of years to get there varies. This ensures institutions are comparably priced over time.

Part of JSTOR’s non-profit mission is to support the long-term preservation of the content in our care. We established the Archive Capital Fee (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.