JSTOR
The Scholarly Journal Archive

About  |  Accessing  |  Searching  |  Browse Journals |   Printing  |  Tips

JSTOR provides a full-text archive of almost 200 core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The service digitizes and provides enhanced indexing to complete collections of these journals, starting with the very first issues, many of which date from the 1800's. Current issues are not included and there is a fixed period of time, from 1 to 5 years, between the most recent issue of any journal and the most recent issue available in JSTOR.

Access JSTOR from the Western Libraries homepage.  There is a link to JSTOR under Find Article Databases by Name.   JSTOR can also be found on the main list of databases.

BASIC SEARCH

From the JSTOR homepage, select Search.

Enter Search Terms:  Enter your keyword(s) in the box, using Boolean operators to combine your search terms.

• Combining keywords:  JSTOR allows you to combine your keywords by using the Boolean operators AND, OR, or NOT.  AND expands your search by finding articles in which both keywords occur.  Using OR directs JSTOR to retrieve articles which contain one of your keywords.  NOT limits your results by excluding the keyword following NOT.
   

• Phrase searching:  Use double quotation marks to search for two or more words as an exact phrase.
   

• Searching by Field:  By default your search terms will be compared with every word in the body of the articles as well as the citation information (e.g. author, title).  You may choose to narrow your search query to the title, author, source, or other citation information by using field operators.  The most commonly used field operators are ti: to search for a title and au: to search for an author.  To get a complete list of field operators, choose Search Help from the menu on the right of the search box, and then select by Field. 

  • Author:  To search for an author's name, enclose it in parentheses in any order.  Keep in mind that this is an exact search.  If you search by the author's first and last name, you will only retrieve articles with the author listed by full first and last name.  Likewise, if you search using the author's middle name or initial, the search results will only include the records that list the author's name with the middle name or initial.
    Example:   au:(Frederick Turner) or au:(Turner Frederick) will retrieve articles with the author listed as Frederick J. Turner or Frederick Jackson Turner. 
    au:(Frederick Jackson Turner) will not retrieve articles with the author listed as Frederic J. Turner or Frederic Turner.

  • Title:  ti: search terms are compared with every word in the article title.

  • Abstract:  ab: search terms are compared with every word in the article abstract.  Please note that only about 10% of articles in the JSTOR database contain abstracts.

  • Caption:  ca: this search is supported only for titles in Art & Art History, Architecture & Architectural History, and select portions of other disciplines.  Captions are also included in the full-text search.
     

• Wildcards and Plurals:
  Use the ? (question mark) symbol as a wild card.  To replace 0 or 1 characters in a word, use one ?.  To replace up to 7 characters in a word, use multiple ?'s in place of the characters.
  You may search in JSTOR for plurals using the & (ampersand) symbol.  Please note that JSTOR will not search for irregular plurals (goose/geese), nor will JSTOR search for plurals in foreign languages such as Latin, Greek, French, etc.  Use the wildcard symbol to search for these words.
  Examples:            "culture&" will find culture and cultures, but not cultural.
                                  "culture?" will find culture, cultures, and cultural
                                  "te?ts" will find tents or texts or any other word starting with te and ending in ts
                                  "bird???" will find bird, birds, birding and any other word up to 7 characters long that starts with bird.
                            

Viewing your Search Results:  Your search results are, by default, displayed according to relevancy ranking.  You may choose from a drop down menu at the top of the results page to sort by date or journal title instead.  The page of search results provides the user with several different choices of how to view the record.  You may click on the title to go to the first page of the article, or by clicking on the links at the end of the citation you may choose to view the full citation (and abstract if it is available) or the page where at least one of your search terms is first found.  Because JSTOR shows you the digitized journal pages, the terms you searched for are not highlighted in any way, but in the full-text search you may move from the "page of first match" to other pages within the same article where your search terms may appear.  When viewing a page of an article that was included in your search results, a list of page links are included at the top of the page.  These pages are where at least one of your search terms is found.

Modify your search by clicking the Modify Your Search button on the search results screen.  You will be brought back to your original search query which you can edit.

ADVANCED SEARCH

Click  Advanced Search from menu on the right hand side of the Basic Search screen.

Enter Search Terms:  The advanced search screen provides different search boxes that allow you to combine your search terms in the same way as the Basic Search, but without having to manually insert Boolean operators and quotation marks. 

Enter all of the keywords that must appear in your results in the  All of these Words search box.
Use The exact phrase to search for two or more words as an exact phrase
Use At least one of these words box to retrieve results that include at least one of the search terms you insert, but not necessarily all of them.
Use None of these words to exclude results that contain a certain term.

You may use one or more of the search boxes.  When using more than one of the search boxes JSTOR "ands" your search terms together.  For example, this search query  would retrieve results that include the words language and literature, and the terms Native American or Native Americans (because the & was used to search for plurals), and either school, schools, schooled, or schooling (because we used three ? wildcards), or education.

See the Basic Search directions for using wildcards and searching for plurals.

Narrow your Search:

• Searching by Field:  You may search full-text, or you may search by field by clicking  in the title, author, caption, or abstract box.  You may select multiple fields.  Remember that only about 10% of JSTOR articles contain abstracts and the caption field search is only supported in a portion of the database.

• Searching by Type:  You may search all of the items in JSTOR by not choosing any of the type options.  Click in one or more of the boxes to search by Article (full-length article), Review (articles in which another item, such as a book, is reviewed), Opinion piece (letters to the editor, editorials), and/or Other items (which may include captions, front or back material, etc.)

• Searching by Date:  To narrow your search to a specific date(s) simply enter a date using a yyyy, yyyy/mm, or yyyy/mm/dd format.  If a date is entered in the first date field, but the second field is left blank, the results will include articles from the date entered to the most recent issue.  Likewise, leaving the first field empty and entering a date in the second field will return results published before, and including, that date.

• Search by Disciplines or Journals:  In the Advanced Search you have the option of searching only certain disciplines by clicking the box next to the discipline. You can select specific journals you want to search in by either typing the journal names into the box titled These Journal Title(s) or by clicking on the icon next to the disciplines and selecting one or more journals from the list.

Viewing your Search Results and Modifying your Search:  Your search results are scored and viewed the same whether you did a Basic or Advanced Search.

BROWSE THE JOURNALS

You may use the Browse feature in JSTOR to browse a particular journal issue page by page. From the JSTOR homepage select Browse, or select Browse from the menu on any JSTOR page.  You can then select a discipline or journal to browse.
Example:  Select History under Browse by Discipline.  This will provide you with a complete list of the history journals JSTOR indexes and digitizes. Click on the journal title Journal of American History.   You are now able to select a volume and issue number, and browse the list of journal articles in that issue.
Note:  To SEARCH within a journal follow the instructions above for Searching by Discipline or Journal.

Print:  You must use JSTOR's print option, not the web browser's print button.
Select Print from the JSTOR menu from either the top or the bottom of the page.  You will be asked if you want to print the article using PDF High Quality.  Select OK or Proceed with Printing. The article will open up as an Adobe Acrobat file.  Now click the Adobe Print button.

E-mail:  JSTOR is unable to email full text articles.  However, you are able to email a list of saved JSTOR citations, including hyperlinks to the full text of the articles, by clicking on Save Citation for each record.  Then select View Saved Citations.  At the bottom of your "Saved Citations" page you will need to choose as an email from the Export Citations drop down menu, and printer-friendly from the format drop down menu. 

Downloading:  You may download articles to your hard drive for printing later, or it may also be possible, depending on the size of the articles,  to save articles on a floppy disk. Select Download from the JSTOR menu at the top or bottom of the page.  JSTOR will provide you with options and directions on how to save these files.
 

OTHER JSTOR TIPS

• Please be patient.  JSTOR can be slower than some other databases you may be used to. 

• If your search results in too many hits try using additional search terms, combined with AND or NOT or using the All of these words or None of these words search boxes in the Advanced Search.  You can also try using the limits (article type, journal title, or date range) provided by JSTOR, using more specific search terms, or searching in the title and abstract fields rather than in full-text.

• If your search results in too few hits try using plurals or alternate word variations, eliminate or broaden your limits, and check for misspellings.

• For additional help, select About JSTOR  or Tips (accessible from the top menu on JSTOR pages).
  
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