JSTOR, the not-for-profit digital library of thousands of academic journals and other content, has announced that more than one million articles have now been accessed by individuals participating in its free programme, Register & Read.
The archive collections, which constitute the core of the JSTOR digital library, have been available to researchers at universities, colleges, high schools, and other libraries for years, and increasingly to the general public through a variety of means, from being a walk-in user or alumni of a JSTOR-participating library to electronic inter-library loan.
In 2010 JSTOR began work on an effort to vastly expand public access to the archive collections - building the necessary infrastructure and relationships with publishers - and in March 2012, JSTOR introduced Register & Read, a programme that provides free, online-reading access to the complete archives of more than 1,300 journals to anyone who registers for an account.
Today, more than 700,000 people have registered and are reading academic journals that span more than fifty subjects in the arts and sciences. Registrants include independent researchers and professionals, in addition to students and scholars from around the world.
Reading is heaviest in fields like literature, education, economics, and history, but users are accessing journals in every area and specialization. Register & Read participants can read up to three items from the archive every two weeks. Many have read only one work, though about 50,000 users each month return to read more.
