[v1tyaz]

Since you seem to have all the solutions to JStor's woes, maybe you should apply for a spot on the board of directors. I'm sure they've never even thought of using volunteers, or accepting donations. With you on board, they'd never have to charge another cent!

Sorry, but you're being completely unrealistic. Do you honestly think JStor would be able to rake in nearly as many donations as Wikipedia does with a userbase that is no where near as big as them? The people behind JStor aren't some cabal that just loves charging people a ton of money for access to journal articles (key word being access). If it were feasible to use donations and volunteers alone to provide their service to the general public for free, they would've done that.

> No it doesn't. All you need to do is free the publicly funded data.

I'm getting tired of this pointless philosophical debate. Hosting the articles is a small portion of what JStor actually does. When this Public.Resource.Org group goes to the library and digitizes all these journals, including tagging and sorting them, let me know if they'll still be able to provide them for free. Hint: they won't. Unless they keep getting people to unlawfully access them from an organization that does, that is.

If JStor were some big corporation that was raking in millions of dollars each year, then you'd have a point, but they're not. They are a non-profit that is doing excellent work.

[chaostheory]

I am realistic:

1) I would think that most researchers use computers and not typewriters to write their papers. It's been this way for a few decades now.

2) While Wikipedia has more donations, since they also have more users and way more data; they have much bigger hosting operations related costs than JSTOR. Even then, they've been able to run below $5 million dollars a year. Correction: JSTOR generates $65 million per year. They have a lot more resources, nicer offices, and much bigger salaries than Wikipedia; even though they have a much smaller audience and less data.

3) Other organizations are scanning books and they aren't charging for access to that data. Also once it's scanned, the ongoing costs are minimal. Storage is cheap and it continues to get cheaper.

I'm sorry but it would not cost $250 million dollars to make this available to everyone. Maybe a huge portion of these costs are due to their expensive Park Avenue office in Manhattan?

> Hint: they won't. Unless they keep getting people to unlawfully access them from an organization that does, that is.

This isn't privately funded research that JSTOR and academic journals are hoarding. It's publicly funded and it should be easily accessed by the public.