jstor opens limited free access option non-subscribing scholars | Inside Higher Ed

"For a subscription-based content vault like JSTOR, the economy of the modern Web is a double-edged sword....This edge can cut for you — and JSTOR has begun trying to wield it to expand the archive’s user base. In 2009, the nonprofit opened its Alumni Access pilot, a program that allows subscribing institutions to pay an extra fee to buy lifetime access to the archive for its alumni. Then, last September, JSTOR announced its Early Journal Content program, which allows anybody in the world to download hundreds of thousands of the older articles in its archive for free, no matter where they went to college. Now JSTOR is getting ready to go one step further, by cutting a small window in its paywall for visitors who are not affiliated with any subscribing institution. The new program, called Register & Read, will soon let anybody read articles in the JSTOR archives at no cost. Under the new program, unsubscribed visitors will be allowed to check out three “items” from the JSTOR archive every two weeks, which they will be able to read for free. In order to prevent piracy, the texts will be displayed as image files (so that text cannot be copied). Users will not be able to download the files...."