JSTOR's "Google Effect"
As we look back on the past year, we see that use of the JSTOR archive continues to grow at a rapid pace. In 2006, there were almost 372 million significant accesses of the JSTOR archive (a 49.4% increase from 2005) from participating institutions, including over ninety-five million articles viewed (a 59.7% increase from 2005).
What factors may have contributed to this growth? In addition to users accessing JSTOR directly through our search and browse interface, we have begun collaborating with search engines to provide additional pathways to the archive. Specifically, in early 2006, in response to requests from students, faculty, and researchers using the JSTOR archive, JSTOR finalized an agreement with Google to allow the popular search engine to begin "crawling" and indexing the book reviews and full-length articles archived in JSTOR for discovery purposes. A "crawl site" was created especially for this purpose, and the vast majority of archived journals available in JSTOR have now been indexed in Google Scholar, as well as Google's main search.
There are several ways to access JSTOR through Google/Google Scholar. Those of you at participating institutions may access the articles seamlessly in JSTOR by clicking on the URL provided in the Google/Google Scholar search result. (Off-site users must first authenticate via their libraries' remote access system.) This route to JSTOR has become increasingly popular: in the ten months of 2006 that this option was available, over 67.6 million referrals from Google/Google Scholar resulted in just over 8.4 million views of full-text articles in JSTOR (nearly 9% of the total articles viewed in JSTOR in 2006). For the remaining fifty-nine million referrals—originating from independent researchers, non-participating institutions, or from participating institutions wishing to access back issues in a JSTOR collection to which they were not licensed—our Options for Access to JSTOR (Options for Access to JSTOR) provides a number of ways in which the user might locate the articles in their search results, including:
- "Access Options" – leads the user to lists of JSTOR participating institutions (in case they might have privileges at a nearby library), as well as an option to purchase the article from the publisher, if the publisher has opted to provide that service;
- "View the First Page" – in most cases, JSTOR is able to provide the user with the first page of the article so he/she can make sure that it is indeed the article of interest;
- "About the Journal" – allows the user to view detailed publication information, should he/she desire to contact the publisher directly and request a copy of the article.
As 2006 usage statistics reveal, Google has helped direct more users to the scholarship available in JSTOR. We look forward to further expanding the pathways to the archive and to continue to broaden the opportunities for access in the year to come.