Science Announcement about JSTOR Partnership

July 19, 2007

Washington, DC -- Effective December 31, 2007, AAAS will end its participation in JSTOR. This means that Science will no longer contribute its content to JSTOR, and that the year 2002 will be the last year of Science contained within the JSTOR collection.

Current JSTOR customers will continue to have access to Science content in JSTOR, which will include the Science collection from 1880-2002. However, as of December 31, 2007, JSTOR will no longer include access to Science content in any offerings to new JSTOR subscribers.

Basis for Decision:

AAAS has been a pioneer in providing widespread electronic access to scientific journal content and was one of the earliest major publisher partners of JSTOR, beginning in 1998. For the past 10 years we have carried out our responsibility to facilitate ubiquitous access to Science content for scientists worldwide through a variety of programs, including participation in JSTOR, but also including our site license programs, Science Online subscriptions, and many other initiatives that provide free access for many scientists in the developing world.

Our decision to end participation in the JSTOR program comes only after a very careful consideration of the issues and after having conducted a series of comprehensive consultations with our customers and readers around the world.

Like all society publishers, our strategic planning must reflect a business environment that is in a constant state of transition, one that has recently seen dramatic technological and competitive changes. An increasing number of large society and STM journals are digitizing and controlling their own content, and AAAS shares the belief that it is now time to assume the full responsibility for maintaining a complete electronic archive of its flagship publication. As part of that effort, we made the decision to create Science Classic -- a digital archive of more than 115 years of Science content -- thereby joining most other major society and STM publishers in that approach.

We believe that, as the world’s largest general scientific society, we have a responsibility to our membership and site license users both to create, enhance, and maintain a complete electronic archive and to fully integrate that historical content with our very latest published material, including supplemental research and multimedia, moving forward. Science Classic does that. Through it we have created a means for our members and site license users to seamlessly and instantaneously access, search, and interact with the entire corpus of Science content through a single interface within the AAAS environment, regardless of when it was originally published. Since its release in 2006, Science Classic has received high praise from our customers and its use has continued to grow steadily.

The success of Science Classic led us to the conclusion that the effective duplication of effort necessary to provide JSTOR with historical Science content was not practical from either a strategic or an operational perspective. Accordingly, the decision to terminate our ongoing arrangement with JSTOR was made.

How this decision will impact Science readers:

Science Online with Science Classic subscribers:
This decision will have no impact on those institutional subscribers of Science Online with Science Classic, as they will continue to have access to the entire Science collection from 1880 – present.

Science Online subscribers:
This decision will have no impact on institutional subscribers of Science Online as they will continue to have unrestricted access to Science content published between 1997 – present.

Access to Science Classic, the newly digitized back file collection from 1880-1996, is available to institutional customers through a separate site license. For more information visit www.scienceclassic.org.

AAAS members:
This decision will have no impact on AAAS members, as they will continue to have unrestricted access to the entire Science collection from 1880 – present.

We will be working with JSTOR closely over the next several months to ensure a seamless transition and to make sure that the needs of our mutual customers are fully met. You can expect to learn more information regarding that transition as it becomes available.

Please feel free to direct any questions about Science Classic or Science Online to scienceonline{at}aaas.org.