Dear colleagues,
On March 18th, working in collaboration with JSTOR’s publishing partners, we announced a set of expanded access offerings to support libraries, faculty, and students making the emergency shift to remote instruction and research. In the nine weeks since launching the program, there have been more than 10 million accesses to that content. We are inspired by the impact of the initiative and are motivated by the many messages of support we have received from publishers, librarians, and users.
As colleges and universities confront the fall, it is unclear whether students will be able to return to campus or if learning will again have to be online. Even if students can return, what is clear is that there will be extensive reliance on online resources and instruction. To help the community respond to that challenge and to aid faculty and libraries in planning for the fall semester, we are announcing today that the following expanded access programs will continue through December 31, 2020:
- Full archive expanded access program (all Arts & Science Collections, Thematic Collections, Primary Source Collections not currently licensed by your institution are available at no additional charge). For those who have already signed up, we will automatically extend your access, others can request access now. Please let us know if you would like to end it prior to December 31.
- Browser Pairing
- Freely accessible Public Health journals newly added in March 2020
- Freely accessible coronavirus related books and journal articles
- Free online reading expanded to 100 articles/month
- Remote access enablement, upon request, for public library participants, for JSTOR and Artstor
We also offered expanded free access to a collection of books through June 30, 2020, on behalf of a group of publishers. We are working with our university press and publishing partners to decide the next steps for that program, and will inform you if there are any extensions to the June 30th deadline.
This is a challenging time for all of us. At ITHAKA our entire team is digging in to find ways to maintain our high levels of service while lowering costs. We depend on your support just as you need the electronic resources we provide. We do not take your support for granted and are working to develop creative responses to this challenge in this uniquely difficult moment. Extending our expanded access offering is one such step, but we are considering others as well. We welcome your suggestions for things we could do that would be helpful, not only through JSTOR, but for Artstor, Ithaka S+R and Portico as well.
Despite this time of hardship, the way that the academic and research communities have responded to this challenge offers reasons for optimism. It is incredible how quickly colleges have been able to adapt to online instruction. Of course it is far from perfect, but we are learning from this collective experience, and we will emerge with knowledge about how we can use technology to educate more people at lower costs all over the world. It will require hard work, and a particular emphasis on addressing the needs of the less advantaged in our society, but we can indeed do better and do more with less. Our aim is to continue on that journey with you.
Kevin Guthrie
President, ITHAKA