The JSTOR Secondary Schools Collectio is a specially curated package of over 2,700 archival journals and four primary source collections covering the arts, sciences, and business.
Academic journals to support student research and extended essays
With over 2,700 archival journals – the majority of which are unavailable on the open web – four primary source collections, and more than 2,000 open access ebooks, the JSTOR Secondary Schools Collection provides students with a safe and trusted environment to research topics across the curriculum.
It includes access to the following collections: All 15 Arts & Sciences Collections; the Life Sciences Collection; the Ecology & Botany II Collection; the Business IV Collection; and all four Primary Source Collections.
Download the full title list here.
JSTOR is considered a core resource by universities worldwide so the likelihood is your students will use JSTOR at university. Providing students with access to JSTOR now will help develop their research skills and give them a head start in their studies.
Over 1035 schools across the globe subscribe to the JSTOR Secondary Schools Collection through JCS! See the list here.
Features
- Citation Tool – content includes a “Cite This Item” link which provides a preformatted citation for students to copy or export
- My Lists – this feature gives students the ability to create multiple lists to store and organise citations for content
- My Workspace – a tool that allows students to organise their research for articles and book chapters they want to work with later. Add notes to items, delete and move items to and from folders plus export any citation from your workspace when you’re logged in.
- Understanding Series – a research tool that connects primary texts with journal articles and book chapters on JSTOR that cite those texts.
- Research Basics – a course designed to help students build research skills
- Text Analyzer – students can upload their own text or document and Text Analyzer processes the text to find the most significant topics and recommend relevant JSTOR content
“We’ve been very happy with JSTOR as it gives our students access to a huge range of high quality academic resources, and gives them an inkling of the type of research they’ll be expected to do in university. The fact that the resources can be accessed anytime and anywhere is especially important as it means students can continue their research over our long holiday periods.” Michael Bell, Secondary Librarian, British School Tokyo
“We have found JSTOR to be an excellent addition to our digital resource offerings. The platform is incredibly user-friendly, even for our younger students in the middle years. The quality of resources that students can access via JSTOR provides more depth and challenge than students ordinarily encounter in their usual Google searches, which means that they can construct more complex and sophisticated arguments.” Alison Scott, Head of Library, Fairholme College (Australia)
Access is available via IP Authentication, Shibboleth, Username and Password.
To find out more about how the different access options work please see our General Access Information.
Usage statistics are available when you log into your admin account by clicking on www.jstor.org/analytics
Explore JSTOR’s recorded webinars here, with topics ranging from Remote teaching and learning with JSTOR to JSTOR Beyond Journals: Discovering Primary Sources.
Posters, logos, gifs, colouring pages are all available in the libguide: A JSTOR success guide for librarians. You can also request printed materials from JSTOR.
Visit the JSTOR YouTube channel for how-to videos and much more.
Are the journals current?
No, JSTOR is a journal archive, so the majority of journals have an embargo period. In rare instances, a publisher has elected to have no embargo period, so their current issues are available in JSTOR shortly after publication.
How can I find out a journal’s embargo period?
In JSTOR the embargo period of a journal is called the “moving wall”. It represents the time period between the last issue available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal. Moving walls are generally represented in years.
To find out the moving wall of a journal. When you have opened an article, click on the button to the right called ‘Journal Info’, the moving wall can be found under this.
In calculating the moving wall, the current year is not counted. For example, if the current year is 2008 and a journal has a 5 year moving wall, articles from the year 2002 are available.
What subjects does JSTOR Secondary Schools Collection cover?
Journals are available in more than 60 disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences and mathematics. For the full list of subjects, click here.
What primary sources are available in the collection?
- 19th Century British Pamphlets — This is a collection of more than 25,000 pamphlets published in the 19th century. They chronicle political and socioeconomic issues and debates of concern to Britain at the time, and the digitized files preserve images and contemporary annotations. For libraries that subscribe to 19th Century British Pamphlets, the content is available alongside the journals and ebooks on http://www.jstor.org.
- Global Plants — Global Plants is the world’s largest database of digitized, high-resolution plant type specimens, and also includes reference works and primary sources such as correspondences, diaries, botanical illustrations, and photographs. Global Plants is available at http://plants.jstor.org.
- Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa — Struggles for Freedom (http://www.aluka.org/struggles) is a collection of more than 20,000 objects that relate to liberation movements in six southern African countries. The objects include oral histories, speeches, nationalist publications, fully digitized books, and pamphlets.
- World Heritage Sites: Africa — World Heritage Sites (http://www.aluka.org/heritage) is a collection of visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage sites and rock art sites. The more than 50,000 objects in the collection include photographs, 3D models, GIS datasets, site plans, excavation reports, and other scholarly material.
Can I download articles?
Yes, when you have opened an article there is a button to the right giving you the option to download articles as PDFs.
Can I print articles?
Yes you can print off articles but print outs must not be shared with third parties (eg other institutions that do not subscribe). To print an article download the article as a PDF and then select your print options.
How is JSTOR priced?
A school’s subscription cost depends on their JSTOR classification. Classifications are the result of the following:
- The total number of students currently enrolled at your school.
- The percentage (%) of your most recent graduating class that went on to attend university or higher education.
What is the difference between the secondary schools collection and the academic collection used by universities?
The secondary schools collection is a specially curated collection of archival journals relevant for secondary schools, where as universities pick and choose which subjects or journals they want access to.
What’s the difference between my JSTOR login and my school’s JSTOR log in?
The schools login will provide access to all of the content within the Secondary Schools Collection. This will allow the logged-in user to browse and download content on the JSTOR site, however if users want to save articles and use the outline builder, they will need to register for a ‘My JSTOR’ account.
Students will need to log in using their institutions access first, and then log in again using their ‘My JSTOR’ account details if they want to be able to save links and use other JSTOR functionality.
Librarians/teachers should ask students to register for a ‘My JSTOR’ account during their induction to using JSTOR.
What research tools does the JSTOR Secondary Schools Collection have?
- Citation Tool – each book chapter and article on JSTOR includes a “Cite This Item” link. Select that option, and students will get a preformatted citation which they can then copy or export.
- My Lists – feature giving students the ability to create multiple lists to store and organise citations for items
- Outline Builder – integrated with My Lists, the outline builder can be used to organise citations and draft essay and project outlines without leaving JSTOR. Watch video on YouTube.
- Understanding Shakespeare – connecting digital texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library with articles on JSTOR. Pick a play, click a line and instantly see articles on JSTOR that reference the line.
- Research Basics – a course designed to help students build research skills.
- Text Analyzer – another way to search JSTOR, students can upload their own text or document, Text Analyzer processes the text to find the most significant topics and then recommends relevant JSTOR content.