It has always been one of JSTOR's primary objectives to make the archive available as widely as possible. That is one of the reasons that we offer participation fees that vary by institution type, so that less financially strong institutions also have the opportunity to benefit from the resource. Still, with a need to recover our costs in order to insure long-term availability of the archive, we have not been in a position to offer free or deeply subsidized access to institutions that do not have the financial resources to participate on their own. In those cases, JSTOR has turned to foundations for assistance. While some of those foundation funds have helped institutions here in the United States, much of the attention has been focused overseas.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Asia Foundation, The Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation, The Eurasia Foundation, and two foundations that prefer to remain anonymous, have each made grant monies available to international institutions seeking to offer JSTOR as a scholarly resource in their academic communities.

The most recent of these grants is from The MacArthur Foundation, through which we expect 17 institutions of higher education in Russia and Belarus to gain access to JSTOR later this year. The grant will cover the cost of JSTOR's one-time Archive Capital Fee (ACF) and the Annual Access Fee (AAF) for three years.

For The MacArthur Foundation, JSTOR represents a valuable opportunity to enhance its grant-making in Russia. The Foundation's "Initiative in the Former Soviet Union", a program launched in 1991, supports a wide range of universities and scholarly activities including the support and development of new, independent private universities focused on graduate training and research in the social sciences. It is expected that JSTOR will be made available to these new institutions, in addition to a number of established Russian state universities.

"International donors have made building strong library collections a priority at these universities, but they couldn't possibly acquire the magnitude of journal resources offered by JSTOR," explains MacArthur Foundation Program Officer John Slocum, who heads the effort. "JSTOR is an extremely important piece of the puzzle which will reinforce both the teaching and research missions of these schools."

In South Africa, approximately 17 universities, as well as the National Library of South Africa, will have the opportunity to participate in JSTOR thanks to a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to SABINET, a membership organization that provides resources to libraries throughout South Africa.

"These institutions have a dire need to gain access to online information; they know it's available, but they can't afford it," says Pierre Malan, Director at SABINET. According to Malan, SABINET has been working toward the goal of providing South African universities with access to JSTOR since 1996, when William G. Bowen, President of the Mellon Foundation and Chairman of JSTOR's Board of Trustees, introduced JSTOR during a visit to the country.

"Our need for this material was reflected in the fact that the universities subscribe to most of the publications covered by JSTOR," notes Malan. "In some cases, much of the information wasn't even properly catalogued and could not be easily retrieved. JSTOR will make these journals available to a much wider audience."

"This joint effort to bring JSTOR to South African libraries has been an exciting and rewarding experience," says Tom Nygren, Program Officer at The Mellon Foundation. "JSTOR promises to be an important resource for scholars in South Africa."

Greece is another country in which a foundation grant has helped a group of universities to participate in JSTOR. With funding from The Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation, scholars and students at Anatolia College, the University of Crete, the University of Ioannina and the University of Patras, now have access to the JSTOR archive. (The Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation has also awarded a grant to JSTOR to produce a new collection of archeology journals that will be included in a forthcoming JSTOR Collection.) In addition, seven institutions in Ireland and eight in Israel are now participating in JSTOR thanks to anonymous foundation grants.

Individual institutions are also benefiting from similar grants. Vietnam's Institute for International Relations, JSTOR's first participant in that country, received assistance from The Asia Foundation. A grant from The Eurasia Foundation is making it possible for the Economics Education and Research Consortium in the Ukraine to participate. Also, Mellon Foundation grants have facilitated participation at Tsinghua University in China and Mahidol University in Thailand.

Dawn Tomassi, Assistant Director for International Library Relations, notes, "These grants are of enormous importance because they allow us to take the archive to universities in countries without the financial resources to contribute fees to JSTOR at a level consistent with institutions in other parts of the world. Not surprisingly, often these are institutions that could not afford subscriptions to the original journals in the first place, making JSTOR access especially valuable." She adds, "We will continue to seek out foundation funding in an effort to extend the benefits of the JSTOR archive as broadly as possible."

Last updated on September 8, 2006