[WikiEN-l] JSTOR and free external links

[Guettarda]

On 9/11/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/11/07, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > Looking through dozens of articles, I find that many link to journals
> that
> > are hosted on JSTOR. JSTOR is a fine repository of information, but it
> is
> > not
> > free. People researching from home do not have access to the articles
> that
> > are
> > cited, and are expected to pay to see them, unless they go to a
> > participating  library, usually a university library. Very few other
> > people have access to
> > their collection.
> >
> > The fact is that these are journal articles that can be found in most
> good
> > libraries in their paper format. They are then free and available to
> > everyone.
> > In fact, JSTOR is simply a pay-to-view library. Consider too that the
> > actual
> > source is the journal cited, not JSTOR per se.
> >
> > As such, I would encourage peopl to link directly to the magazine that
> > contained the article, not the JSTOR collection which will charge to
> read
> > it. We
> > speak of free content and free images. I want to suggest that we expand
> > the
> > focus to free external links as well.
>
>
> Well, minor nitpick: we're free as in speech, not free as in beer. :p
>
> Anyhow, if this only applies to magazines/journals where a free equivalent
> is available, I'm all for it. Otherwise, I think it's ridiculous - if no
> free equivalent is available, we should use the best sources we've got,
> regardless of whether we have to pay to access them. I've seen articles
> citing subscription-only web sources have their references removed because
> some editors were of the view that only sources you can freely view online
> can be cited. (In such a case, I guess we should stop citing meatspace
> newspapers we have to pay for.)
>
> Johnleemk


John is right.  The reason for having references is so that people can use
them, either to verify information in the article, or to learn more about
the topic.  Stripping a link out just because it's a pay link means that
people who do have access to JSTOR or online journals can't get access to
them.

It isn't an either-or situation.  If there's a choice between linking to a
version on JSTOR and a version that's freely available, then definitely, go
with the free version (although, of course, "free" versions might be things
that people have uploaded without permission, which means they are likely to
disappear).  But if the choice is between JSTOR and no link, then it's
better to provide a link available to SOME people, rather than no link at
all.  Of course, it may be preferable to link to a freely available
abstract, rather than JSTOR (which, sadly, does not allow ANY access to
people who are not subscribed).

It isn't true, by the way, to say that JSTOR access is available only from
libraries.  In my experience, it's available to any computer with a campus
IP, and often to people associated with the universities who are not
physically on campus (for example, if I log in to the library's web page I
can access JSTOR articles from wherever I am).

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing a change in {{Cite journal}} to allow a
separate link to the abstract (if, for example, a free abstract is available
is one place, and a non-free full-text version is available elsewhere.

Saying that we should only link to free content is taking the idea of free
content too far.  Wikipedia's use of free content is utilitarian, not
ideological.  Ideological attraction to free content is great, but that has
nothing to do with our mission to write an encyclopaedia.