There is good news for academic content lovers!
JSTOR, one of the leading sources for academic articles, increased the monthly free articles from six to hundred. The company claims this is their act of support for researchers and academic society in COVID pandemic situations.
How to Get Access to the Free Monthly Articles
To utilize the opportunity of monthly free-read articles, you need to register a personal account in JSTOR. It should have unique login credentials and should be registered as an individual account.
Entering your individual account automatically unlocks the free-read feature for you. You may search and read any topic. However, note that not all articles are available for the free-read feature.
Below described are the technical steps you should take to read the articles.
Log in to your individual JSTOR account.
Search for the article.
Among the accessible articles for the free-read, choose the one you want to read and click on it.
Find and click "Read online" from the "Alternate access options," located under the article title.
Once you choose the Read Online option, you will see an arrow appear on the article viewer normal interface. This means instead of a limited preview of only the first page, you may turn pages and read the full article.
The countback for the free article views starts from the moment of opening the first article. Until the same date for the following month, you have the opportunity to open, read, save, or cite 100 articles. Once the article count resets after a month, you have more 100 views to use.
Note that most of the articles are for reading only, meaning you can not download them in pdf format. But do not worry whether you can lose your research archive's clue by opening and closing up to 100 articles.
The Free Article Views in your profile settings saves all the articles you viewed within the "free access" option. Your previously read articles will also continue to stay there after a month passes. However, if you read the same article in two different months, each of them will count to one view.
Also, consider that JSTOR introduced the new feature as a response to a pandemic crisis. They mention this is a temporary extension of the monthly free articles' limit, though there is no specific date when the feature will be deactivated back to six articles a month.
Even if temporary, this extension is a good opportunity to have a proper base for your research. Alternatively, a JPASS access package is paid and provides you with an unlimited base of articles. However, 100 articles monthly should be enough even for taking a years' long research. So, JSTOR made the almost equivalent of existing paid packages, which is a perfect opportunity!
About JSTOR
JSTOR is a leading digital library, connecting researchers, academic people, and simply curious ones to highly selective, qualitative knowledge. Here, you can find academic-level workings in 75 disciplines. The platform collaborates with 1200 publishers from more than 57 countries to form the content it provides.
The main sections you can benefit from in JSTOR are:
Journals
Books
Primary Sources
Thematic Collections
Open Community Collections
Instead of searching in Google, other search engines, or separate platforms of Academic sources, working with JSTOR can become your competitive advantage for quality research. Besides the above mentioned 100 article free-access, the platform also offers free Access to unlicensed and Artstor's collections within the COVID support initiative.
Published on Jan 08, 2021
