Chris Blattman

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The global knowledge gap grows further?

Yale is the latest of 19 institutions to provide unlimited access to JSTOR to alumni through the archive’s Alumni Access pilot, which it opened with little fanfare in 2009.

Argh. Those evil publishers.

But wait! As I learned in comments to a July 2009 post, there is free JSTOR for Africa (or at least African non-profits and universities).

From the Outreach & Education folks at JSTOR:

We work with INASP and eIFL to make JSTOR collections (including Aluka collections) freely available to all not-for-profit institutions in Africa and in several countries in other regions. Institutions need to register with INASP and eIFL to start the process. We would be certainly be willing to extend JSTOR access to the African branches and local offices of NGOs with headquarters in other countries.

We also have reduced fees for a group of countries beyond those that are eligible for free access. Lists of these countries are available on the Developing Nations Access Initiative page. I would encourage folks to contact our Outreach & Participation Services staff (participation@jstor.org), or INASP and eIFL, if you have any questions about eligibility.

So, publishers are…. not evil? My world is falling apart around me.

h/t (for the Yale privilege) to MR

9 Responses

  1. (Do a few googling and you will have unlimited access to JSTOR, using an institutional account of some university or college not even familiar to you, right in the comfort of your home. I found out that this is what some people from these developing nations do — sharing usernames and passwords. ;)

  2. Google Scholar has tens of millions of searchable academic papers.
    Free to everyone. All over the world.

  3. ‘JSTOR is a *not—for—profit service* that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive of over one thousand academic journals and other scholarly content’. (http://about.jstor.org/)
    It would be interesting to see how generous *for profit* publishers like Elsevier and Springer are when it comes to (embargo-free) access for African users…

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