An Academic Archive Became a Tech Juggernaut

A brief reminder that if you read an article about JSTOR and it doesn't even mention Aaron Swartz, it's a puff piece.

The blurb in the article's overview about "users praise JSTOR’s public-good focus that translates into pricing restraint and an eagerness to improve services?" To the extent that's at all true - and I can't imagine any active academic who would say that with a straight face - it was Aaron's activism that made this possible. Per https://stanforddaily.com/2020/03/27/remembering-aaron-swart... :

> Swartz’s death became a rallying cry for issues of information equity and open access, according to Hill. A lot of the information that is currently open access on JSTOR became available to the public following Swartz’s death, when people released material they had from JSTOR and pressured JSTOR to make changes, Hill said.

In Swartz's own words, here:

> Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world.

https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...

Shameless puff piece

Jstor: at least we’re not Elsevier!