Ecology journal archive is launched

UK universities can now access an ecology and botany collection comprising 29 journals and more than 1 million pages put together by Jstor, the scholarly journals archive.

It is the third digital archive collection of core scholarly journals, starting with the first issues, many of which date back to the 1800s, to be released by the service. Titles include some of the most important in the environmental sciences such as the American Journal of Botany, Ecology and the International Journal of Plant Sciences .

Ecologists, conservationists and researchers will be able to research journal literature in the environmental sciences published over the past 130 years.

The ecology and botany collection has been created in conjunction with the non-profit Ecological Society of America. Funding given to the society by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has allowed Jstor and the Joint Information Systems Committee to reduce access fees for the materials. It will cost a large university £2,750, with lower charges for smaller institutions, and £175 for a further education college.

To complement the existing Arts and Sciences I collection, 22 additional multidisciplinary titles have been released by Jstor. At least 100 titles from 19 disciplines, including eight not covered by the first collection, will be available when the Arts and Sciences II collection is completed in 2002.

Meanwhile, 20 journals new to Jstor will feature in its Business collection, scheduled to go online late this year.