The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that JSTOR plans to make 70 journals from their far larger collection available to unaffiliated individuals on a very limited basis. Here’s how it will work,
All users have to do is to sign up for a free “MyJSTOR” account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles.But there are limits. Users won’t be able to download the articles; they will be able to access only three at a time, and there will be a minimum viewing time frame of 14 days per article, which means that a user can’t consume lots of content in a short period. Depending on the journal and the publisher, users may have an option to pay for and download an article if they choose.
I did say very “very limited basis.” All this is a step in the right direction. A better step would be to allow individual subscriptions. Sure, an even better step would allow free access to the whole collection. But until the publishing industry or the scholarly community without the publishing industry figures out how to make all journal articles open access this just isn’t in the cards.
You can see what’s going to be available by way of a link from JSTOR’s Register and Read page. While a few of these journals will be of interest to abnormal readers, this list will not reduce the number of times I will need to run to the library.
Via Charles Halton at Awilum.