[jackpirate]

That price actually seems pretty reasonable for a large research university.

The real question is how much they charge individuals who want to get an article. My first google search (http://www.jstor.org/pss/27757488) results in $12/article. This is very steep when you're trying to do research and don't even know if the article is what you're looking for.

[Vivtek]

Well, you wouldn't want any old rabble getting access to valuable knowledge. Far better for that access to be safely controlled by the major research institutions, who can clearly be trusted to pursue knowledge in a responsible manner.

[a3camero]

How is that reasonable? Sounds like Mr. Swartz was willing to host them for free! And he would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling police.

But seriously, $12/article is ludicrous. That must be way above cost recovery or they're not doing a very efficient job of running JSTOR. Perhaps the co-founder of Reddit would do a better job...

[xefer]

Most public libraries have relationships with JSTOR that allow members to access the articles online. I use the Boston Public Library and look up articles via Google Scholar. All free.

[kragen]

Some public libraries do, but the vast majority of public libraries in the world do not.

[ars]

Are you sure? Maybe not in the world, but I'm pretty sure all large public libraries in the US do subscribe to these kinds of databases.

[kragen]

I admit that I don't have statistics [edit: on libraries], but most libraries in the world are not large or in the US, and JSTOR's prices for a "small" library in "the rest of the world" are much, much larger than [edit: wrong — comparable to or perhaps a bit larger than, but not much, much larger than] their entire budget. Check out http://support.jstor.org/csp/PriceCalculator/. This code (for Chrome) gives me a yearly price of $81162.70, although it hangs the browser for a while first:

    function mouseEvent() { var event = document.createEvent("MouseEvents"); event.initMouseEvent("click", true, true, window, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, false, false, false, false, 0, null); return event; }
    function each(list, thunk) { list = Array.prototype.slice.call(list); for (var ii = 0; ii < list.length; ii++) { thunk(list[ii]); } }
    each(document.getElementsByClassName('expand'), function(link) { link.dispatchEvent(mouseEvent()) })
    each(document.getElementsByClassName('e-only'), function(link) { link.dispatchEvent(mouseEvent()) })

[ars]

It's sad that you have to write javascript code to do that! (But also cool that you did. :)

"Complete Current Scholarship Collection" for 22751.90 is a duplicate of all the things above it. So I think some of the entries have been double counted.

The real price for most libraries may about 1/2 or less of your estimate (they won't be interested in everything). And 20,000 to 40,000 is (well, shouldn't) be a lot of money for a public library.

That's the salary for a single employee! I would expect a library to have at least 5 employees, plus a budget to buy books.

Also I would expect a small library to have only a subset of the papers, and for serious research you would need to "go into the city".

[kragen]

Oh, thanks for finding that error!

I think you're thinking very much of US salaries. $40,000 a year shouldn't be a lot of money for a public library in the US, because it's the salary for a single employee (or the total costs for half an employee!), and the wonderful public library system in the US does indeed have multiple libraries. But world GDP per person is about US$10k per year, compared to the US's US$47k — and the bulk of that GDP comes from a few rich countries with only a small fraction of the population. An average country is something like Jamaica, Thailand, or the Dominican Republic, where the per-capita GDP is something like US$8.8k.

So US$40k per year is the salary for almost five employees. Except that within Jamaica or Thailand (or, to a lesser extent, the US) the median salary is much lower. And it's probably not the prime minister's niece who's working the librarian job. So maybe it's more like eight to ten employees.

So, yeah, most libraries — even measured numerically, but especially measured by the number of people who rely on them — are a lot poorer than what you're used to.

I haven't checked yet to see if the National Library here in Buenos Aires has JSTOR access.

[apu]

relationships = they pay the institutional fee (possibly reduced) to JSTOR