In any network, there are many ways to get to a destination. Nowhere is this more evident than the World Wide Web, where academic resources have proliferated, each serving as a pathway for scholarly research. Over the course of the last year, JSTOR has been working with publishers, academic societies, libraries, and electronic resource providers to build links into the JSTOR archive. A growing number of users reach JSTOR through these links: in 2001, 2.6% of article requests came from links, and in the first quarter of 2002, this number had risen to 6.6%. As researchers become accustomed to moving seamlessly from resource to resource, requests are now on the rise to include links out from the JSTOR archive to various resources.

JSTOR users are eager to search journal content beyond JSTOR's moving wall and to link to the publisher's current content online whenever possible. With the current issues of over 140 of the journals in JSTOR being published online, through either the publisher's own website or through other online resources, scholars and librarians have told us that the increased functionality of linking to this material would play a beneficial role in facilitating research at their institutions.

Current issues linking, as we call it, provides users with the ability to search the metadata of the current issues of a journal (that is, content which extends beyond JSTOR's moving wall), while also allowing JSTOR to maintain that moving wall, an important provision that balances participating publishers' need to generate revenue from their current material while also allowing JSTOR to serve as an archive of that material. Additionally, researchers who are authorized to access resources hosting the full text of the current journal articles, either through an individual subscription or institutional site licenses, are then able to access that current content via links from JSTOR.

In May, JSTOR implemented a current issues linking pilot involving a small number of titles common to JSTOR and Project MUSE® (see accompanying list). This pilot, which includes journals from four publishers, is just the first step in an effort that we expect will someday include all JSTOR participating publishers and titles. JSTOR users are now able to search and browse the title, author, and abstract (when available) for recent articles from the Project MUSE titles. Users authorized to access these journals in Project MUSE are then able to follow direct links to the full-text articles available via Project MUSE. In the case where a user does not have access to Project MUSE, a standard page appears that suggests the user contact a local librarian or the participating publisher for more information. Initially, JSTOR has included links to content through the 2001 issues of the journals. Links to subsequent issues will be added on a quarterly basis.

Participants have responded very positively to this pilot. "I really appreciate how well you are working with the publishers to create access to the entire run of the journal," notes one librarian. Another writes, "It is great to hear [about] enhanced features added to JSTOR to facilitate access to these academic/scholarly journals." The feature has been heavily used since its introduction. Through the first five months of the pilot, users from 954 institutions have followed links to articles beyond the moving wall 16,215 times.
Since launching the pilot, JSTOR has begun to look at other ways to provide current issues links to users. As more and more libraries implement localized linking solutions, it is not sufficient to simply offer a direct link to the publisher site for the full-text. More robust solutions are being demanded. One way to accommodate this demand is with the OpenURL protocol, which makes it possible for libraries to host local linking servers (such as SFX, LinkFinderPlus, and Openly Informatics) and configure their own localized linking environment. Many JSTOR participating libraries have already implemented linking servers, and we have recently begun offering the delivery of OpenURLs as a linking option. We anticipate that many more of our sites will be choosing this option in the near future, and have instructions for enabling OpenURL links available at http://www.jstor.org/resources/openurl/openurl.setup.html.

Information about current linking is available on our website at http://www.jstor.org/about/recent-issues.html.

TITLES IN THE JSTOR/PROJECT MUSE
LINKING PILOT (AS OF SEPTEMBER 2002)

Duke University Press
American Literature
Hispanic American Historical Review
Transition

Folger Shakespeare Library
Shakespeare Quarterly

The Johns Hopkins University Press
American Journal of Mathematics
American Quarterly
Eighteenth-Century Studies
ELH
Journal of the History of Ideas
MLN
Reviews in American History
World Politics

University of North Carolina Press
Social Forces

Last updated on September 8, 2006