University of Chicago Press Joins Current Scholarship Program

[Kevin Stacey <kstacey@uchicago.edu>]

*With apologies for cross-posting*

For Immediate Release: March 12, 2010

University of Chicago Press Joins Current Scholarship Program

The University of Chicago Press and JSTOR announced today that 
they will join forces in the Current Scholarship Program. 
Scheduled to launch early next year, the program will bring 
scholarly content from leading not-for-profit publishers to a 
single integrated platform, making its use more innovative, 
efficient, and affordable for faculty, students, librarians and 
publishers.

The University of Chicago Press, one of the world's oldest and 
largest university presses, brings 51 renowned titles to the 
program, including many of the most influential publications in 
the world such as The American Historical Review, The American 
Naturalist, the American Journal of Sociology and the Journal of 
Political Economy. Both current and back issues will be 
accessible on the platform.

First announced last August, the Current Scholarship Program 
addresses some of the biggest challenges and inefficiencies in 
scholarly communications today. For scholars and educators, the 
program offers an improved online work environment that combines 
new content with complete journal backfiles. For librarians, the 
collaboration brings leading journals from multiple publishers 
together under one roof, allowing direct licensing through JSTOR.

"While there have been great advances in ease of use and access 
to scholarly content in the last decade, researchers and 
librarians are now faced with a multitude of online platforms and 
interfaces. Navigating among these silos of content and 
identifying the authoritative material requires climbing not one, 
but many, learning curves. It is still not as efficient as it 
should be," said Michael Spinella, JSTOR Managing Director. 
"Meanwhile, scholarly publishers are challenged with managing 
fast-paced changes in technology and reaching new audiences. We 
know we can address some of these issues by working 
collaboratively and with a shared sense of purpose."

There are now eleven publishers working together as part of the 
program, and that number is rapidly increasing. With the addition 
of Chicago, the current issues for at least 150 journals will be 
available on JSTOR by 2011. This content will be seamlessly 
integrated with and accessible alongside the more than 1,100 
journals with back issues on JSTOR today as well as a growing set 
of primary source materials from libraries and museums.

More than 6,000 JSTOR library participants worldwide will be able 
to license the current journals, either individually or as part 
of current issue collections, together with JSTOR back issue 
collections in a single transaction. The journals will also 
continue to be preserved in Portico, the digital preservation 
service that, along with JSTOR, is part of the not-for-profit 
ITHAKA.

  "The University of Chicago Press and JSTOR share a significant 
mission: to disseminate scholarship of the highest standard", 
said Garrett Kiely, Director of the University of Chicago Press. 
"The Current Scholarship Program is the next step in our 
long-standing relationship and brings both organizations closer 
to realizing our goals of improved access to many of the world's 
most important publications. We at Chicago are very excited to be 
a part of this and will work closely with JSTOR to continuously 
improve our offerings to the world's libraries."

The relationship between JSTOR and the University of Chicago 
Press dates back to 1996 when the Press became one of the first 
publishers to store journal backfiles in the JSTOR digital 
archive.

"Years ago we worked with The University of Chicago Press to make 
the nascent idea of a large-scale archive of digitized historical 
journals supported by the scholarly community a reality," 
commented Spinella. "It is tremendously exciting to be working 
together again toward a vision that we hope will have similar 
impact and benefit for the academic community."

For more information about the Current Scholarship Program, see 
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/programs/currentScholarship.jsp

Contacts:

JSTOR:
Heidi McGregor
VP, Marketing & Communications
ITHAKA
heidi.mcgregor@ithaka.org
www.jstor.org

The University of Chicago Press:
Kevin Stacey
Publicity Manager
kstacey@press.uchicago.edu
www.journals.uchicago.edu