JSTOR, die Abkürzung für Journal Storage, eine digitale Bibliothek im Jahr 1995. Ursprünglich gegründet wird, die digitalisiert Ausgabe der Fachzeitschriften, ist es nun auch Bücher und Primärquellen und aktuelle Themen der Zeitschriften. JSTOR hilft den Menschen zu entdecken, nutzen und auf eine breite Palette von Inhalten durch eine leistungsfähige Forschung und Lehre Plattform bauen, und bewahrt diese Inhalte für künftige Generationen. Seine reiche, multidisziplinären Primärquellen Sammlungen zusammen zu bringen vielfältige primäre Quelle Inhalte, die Zeitschriftenarchive JSTOR ergänzt. Diese Sammlungen umfassen Monographien, Broschüren, Manuskripte, Briefe, mündlich überlieferten Geschichten, Regierungsdokumente, Bilder, 3-D Modelle, räumliche Daten, Typen Proben, Zeichnungen, Gemälde und vieles mehr.

JSTOR bietet eine Volltextsuche von fast 2.000 Zeitschriften. Ab 2013 mehr als 8.000 Institutionen in mehr als 160 Ländern hatten Zugang zu JSTOR; die meisten Zugang ist per Abonnement, aber einige ältere Public Domain Inhalt ist anyone.JSTOR Einnahmen frei verfügbar wurde im Jahr 2014 $ 69 Millionen.

William G. Bowen, Präsident der Princeton University 1972-1988 gründete JSTOR. JSTOR wurde ursprünglich als eine Lösung für eines der Probleme, die von Bibliotheken, insbesondere Forschungs- und Universitätsbibliotheken, aufgrund der zunehmenden Anzahl von wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften in Existenz konfrontiert konzipiert. Die meisten Bibliotheken fanden es unerschwinglich teuer in Bezug auf Kosten und Raum eine umfassende Sammlung von Zeitschriften zu halten. Durch viele Zeitschriftentitel Digitalisierung erlaubt JSTOR Bibliotheken die Speicherung von Zeitschriften mit dem Vertrauen auszulagern, sie würden langfristig verfügbar bleiben. Die Online-Zugang und die Volltextsuche Fähigkeit dramatisch verbessert Zugang.

Bowen betrachtet zunächst CD-ROMs für die Verteilung verwenden. Doch Ira Fuchs, Princeton University Vizepräsident für Computer und Informationstechnologie, überzeugt Bowen, dass CD-ROM eine zunehmend veraltete Technologie und die Netzverteilung war, kann Redundanz beseitigen und die Zugänglichkeit zu erhöhen. (Zum Beispiel ist alles Princeton administrative und akademische Gebäude wurden von 1989 vernetzen, das Studentenwohnheim Netzwerk im Jahr 1994 fertig gestellt wurde,. Und Campus-Netzwerke wie die in Princeton waren, die wiederum im Zusammenhang mit größeren Netzwerken wie BITNET und dem Internet) JSTOR wurde an sieben verschiedenen Standorten Bibliothek im Jahr 1995 initiiert und ursprünglich zehn Volkswirtschaft und Geschichte Zeitschriften umfasst. JSTOR Zugriff verbesserte basierend auf dem Feedback von seinen ursprünglichen Standorten, und es wurde ein vollständig durchsuchbaren Index von jedem gewöhnlichen Web-Browser.

Mit dem Erfolg dieses Projekts begrenzt, Bowen und Kevin Guthrie, der damalige Präsident von JSTOR, wollte die Zahl der teilnehmenden Zeitschriften erweitern. Sie trafen sich mit Vertretern der Royal Society of London und eine Vereinbarung getroffen wurde, um die Philosophical Transactions der Royal Society digitalisieren des mit seinem Anfang 1665 die Arbeit dieser Band JSTOR Zugabe bis Dezember 2000 abgeschlossen wurde.

Die Andrew W. Mellon Foundation finanziert JSTOR zunächst. Bis Januar 2009 JSTOR betrieben als eigenständige, sich selbst erhaltende Non-Profit-Organisation mit Sitz in New York City und in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dann fusionierte JSTOR mit der Non-Profit-Ithaka Harbors, Inc. – eine gemeinnützige Organisation im Jahr 2003 gegründet und „gewidmet Unterstützung der akademischen Gemeinschaft in vollem Umfang nutzen diese Informationen schnell voran und Netzwerktechnologien.“

JSTOR content is provided by more than 900 publishers. The database contains more than 1,900 journal titles, in more than 50 disciplines. Each object is uniquely identified by an integer value, starting at 1.

In addition to the main site, the JSTOR labs group operates an open service that allows access to the contents of the archives for the purposes of corpus analysis at its Data for Research service. This site offers a search facility with graphical indication of the article coverage and loose integration into the main JSTOR site. Users may create focused sets of articles and then request a dataset containing word and n-gram frequencies and basic metadata. They are notified when the dataset is ready and may download it in either XML or CSV formats. The service does not offer full-text, although academics may request that from JSTOR, subject to a non-disclosure agreement.

JSTOR Plant Science is available in addition to the main site. JSTOR Plant Science provides access to content such as plant type specimens, taxonomic structures, scientific literature, and related materials and aimed at those researching, teaching, or studying botany, biology, ecology, environmental, and conservation studies. The materials on JSTOR Plant Science are contributed through the Global Plants Initiative (GPI) and are accessible only to JSTOR and GPI members. Two partner networks are contributing to this: the African Plants Initiative, which focuses on plants from Africa, and the Latin American Plants Initiative, which contributes plants from Latin America.

JSTOR launched its Books at JSTOR program in November 2012, adding 15,000 current and backlist books to its site. The books are linked with reviews and from citations in journal articles.

JSTOR is licensed mainly to academic institutions, public libraries, research institutions, museums, and schools. More than 7,000 institutions in more than 150 countries have access. JSTOR has been running a pilot program of allowing subscribing institutions to provide access to their alumni, in addition to current students and staff. The Alumni Access Program officially launched in January 2013. Individual subscriptions also are available to certain journal titles through the journal publisher. Every year, JSTOR blocks 150 million attempts by non-subscribers to read articles.

Inquiries have been made about the possibility of making JSTOR open access. According to Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, JSTOR had been asked “how much would it cost to make this available to the whole world, how much would we need to pay you? The answer was $250 million”.

In late 2010 and early 2011, Internet activist Aaron Swartz used MIT’s data network to bulk-download a substantial portion of JSTOR’s collection of academic journal articles. When the bulk-download was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to film the mysterious visitor and the relevant computer was left untouched. Once video was captured of the visitor, the download was stopped and Swartz identified. Rather than pursue a civil lawsuit against him, in June 2011 they reached a settlement wherein he surrendered the downloaded data.

The following month, federal authorities charged Swartz with several “data theft”-related crimes, including wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. Prosecutors in the case claimed that Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites.

Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleaded not guilty to all counts, and was released on $100,000 bail. In September 2012, U.S. attorneys increased the number of charges against Swartz from four to thirteen, with a possible penalty of 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. The case still was pending when Swartz committed suicide in January 2013. Prosecutors dropped the charges after his suicide.

The availability of most journals on JSTOR is controlled by a “moving wall,” which is an agreed-upon delay between the current volume of the journal and the latest volume available on JSTOR. This time period is specified by agreement between JSTOR and the publisher of the journal, which usually is three to five years. Publishers may request that the period of a “moving wall” be changed or request discontinuation of coverage. Formerly, publishers also could request that the “moving wall” be changed to a “fixed wall”—a specified date after which JSTOR would not add new volumes to its database. As of November 2010, “fixed wall” agreements were still in effect with three publishers of 29 journals made available online through sites controlled by the publishers.

In 2010, JSTOR started adding current issues of certain journals through its Current Scholarship Program.

Beginning September 6, 2011, JSTOR made public domain content freely available to the public. This “Early Journal Content” program constitutes about 6% of JSTOR’s total content, and includes over 500,000 documents from more than 200 journals that were published before 1923 in the United States, and before 1870 in other countries. JSTOR stated that it had been working on making this material free for some time. The Swartz controversy and Greg Maxwell’s protest torrent of the same content led JSTOR to “press ahead” with the initiative. As of 2017, JSTOR does not have plans to extend it to other public domain content, stating that “We do not believe that just because something is in the public domain, it can always be provided for free”.

In January 2012, JSTOR started a pilot program, “Register & Read,” offering limited no-cost access (not open access) to archived articles for individuals who register for the service. At the conclusion of the pilot, in January 2013, JSTOR expanded Register & Read from an initial 76 publishers to include about 1,200 journals from over 700 publishers. Registered readers may read up to three articles online every two weeks, but may not print or download PDFs.

This is done by placing up to 3 items on a “shelf”. The “Shelf” is under “My JSTOR” below “My Profile”. The 3 works can then be read online at any time. An item cannot be removed from the shelf until it has been there for 14 days. Removing an old work from the shelf creates space for a new one, but doing so means the old work can no longer be accessed until it is shelved again.

JSTOR is conducting a pilot program with Wikipedia, whereby established editors are given reading privileges through the Wikipedia Library, as with a university library.

In 2012, JSTOR users performed nearly 152 million searches, with more than 113 million article views and 73.5 million article downloads. JSTOR has been used as a resource for linguistics research to investigate trends in language use over time and also to analyze gender differences in scholarly publishing.