Participation Information for U.S. Community Colleges

JSTOR recognizes the important role that community colleges play in offering varied and affordable educational opportunities to an increasingly diverse array of students. Journals that were previously inaccessible to community college faculty and students are now readily available to community college users of JSTOR.

JSTOR Collections

Community colleges may choose to participate in any of JSTOR's Currently Available Collections. Community colleges contribute an Archive Capital Fee (ACF) upon licensing their first JSTOR collection. No ACF is required with the licensing of subsequent collections. Community colleges will also contribute an Annual Access Fee for each collection they select.

JSTOR's focus is on maintaining a trusted archive. JSTOR does not include current issues of the journals. We believe it is possible to work with publishers in a complementary way that will be to everyone's benefit. In our agreements with publishers we have established a lag period, which we call the moving wall, that defines the point at which the JSTOR archive stops and "current" issues start. The moving wall is a fixed period of time ranging in most cases, from two to five years. As each year passes, another year of content is added to the archive, thus guaranteeing that the archive is being constantly updated. Through the moving wall, JSTOR seeks to avoid jeopardizing publishers' subscriptions and revenue opportunities from current and recent material, while also enabling libraries and researchers to rely on JSTOR as a trusted archive, providing both preservation and access for journals after a reasonable period of time. This balancing of interests among publishers, libraries, and scholars is at the center of our approach to pursuing JSTOR's mission and goals.

Participation Process

We invite all U.S. community colleges and two-year institutions to become JSTOR participants. Please see the Archive License Agreement and Participation Fees for more information. Information may also be obtained from the JSTOR New York office:

Last updated on January 2, 2007