Getting started with Books at JSTOR

Free MARC records for Open Access titles are available via OCLC’s WorldShare Collection Manager. The first step varies depending on your library's current use of OCLC Collection Manager.

Selecting the Books at JSTOR Open Access Collection in OCLC's Collection Manager

Libraries that do not currently use OCLC Collection Manager will need to first request a free account. OCLC offers a quick start guide as well as customer support.

Libraries that aren’t participating in the Books at JSTOR program may search for and manually select the Open Access Collection in OCLC Collection Manager using the following steps:

1. In the left-hand navigation pane, uncheck the box for My Selected Collections.
2. Retain the label of Collection in the dropdown.
3. Enter “Books at JSTOR Open Access Collection” in the search box and click Search.
4. Click the Select Collection button in the In My Holdings column.
5. Once the collection is selected, click into it and enable MARC record delivery. OCLC's quick start guide provides directions.
6. Do not manually select other Books at JSTOR collections. Manual selection of the All Purchased collections results in inaccurate record deliveries relative to your library’s holdings. For Books at JSTOR participants, these two collections will be selected automatically as appropriate.

Libraries that already receive MARC records for Books at JSTOR titles through OCLC Collection Manager have two options:

1. Wait for the Books at JSTOR Open Access collection to be automatically selected.
2. Search for and manually select the Books at JSTOR Open Access Collection in Collection Manager. In this case, receiving records through manual selection is okay, and should be quicker than waiting for automatic selection. (Manually selecting a collection means that the library selects the entire collection, and by definition, the library has access to all titles in the Open Access collection.)

Enabling MARC record delivery

Once the collection is selected, the library will need to enable MARC record delivery for that collection. OCLC's quick start guide provides directions for doing this.

For assistance, please contact us.

JSTOR provides metadata and full text for these titles to ProQuest Summon; Ex Libris Primo and Alma; EBSCO Discovery Service; and OCLC WorldCat Discovery Services. These discovery services are adding a target/package for JSTOR Open Access Titles to their knowledge bases so that libraries can easily activate the titles. If you have any questions, contact us.

Librarians at JSTOR participating institutions who are interested in learning how their patrons are using the Open Access ebooks on JSTOR may access a free usage report. This report shows the titles, disciplines, and publishers that faculty and students at your institution have accessed.

Visit our Books at JSTOR reports support page for more information on the reports and to request access to our admin portal.  If you already have an admin account, log in here to access the reports.

JSTOR's Terms & Conditions have been updated. Section 3.3 includes a definition of Open Access and section 4.4 states that any Creative Commons license has precedence over JSTOR's Terms & Conditions. Each Open Access title is available under one of six Creative Commons licenses, and the license type is shown at the bottom of each Open Access book and chapter page.

At JSTOR, we make every effort to avoid selling ebooks that are available on an Open Access basis elsewhere.  In the event that we discover that a book we sell is freely available on another site, we immediately stop selling it, remove it from EBA profiles, and issue a credit to any library that purchased the book within the previous 30 days. The timeframe for credits is slightly different for ebooks acquired through Evidence-Based Acquisition; we will issue a credit for any titles selected during the May 15-June 15 EBA selection period that subsequently move to Open Access by July 31.  We automatically issue the credit and send the library an email notification that includes the title and credit information, and OCLC delivers a delete MARC record for the title.

If the publisher decides to offer the title on an Open Access basis on JSTOR, OCLC will deliver a new MARC record for it in the Open Access collection. We encourage all our participating libraries to make JSTOR’s Open Access ebook collection discoverable to their patrons using the free OCLC MARC records or by activating the collection in their discovery service; please see the instructions listed above. Once you set this up, you will automatically receive updates as new titles are added to the Open Access collection.