Transatlantic journal swap

ELECTRONIC back copies of nearly 50 research journals in 11 different subjects are now available to universities on subscription. The Joint Information Systems Committee of the United Kingdom higher education funding bodies has set up a mirror site of the JSTOR database, started in the United States four years ago with a multi-million donation from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Universities will be able to access more than two million pages of research journals including the Philosophical Review to Shakespeare Quarterly, The Journal of Modern History and Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, dating from no more than five years ago to as far back as 1884.

The site is located at the University of Manchester but is accessible to universities and colleges across the UK at a cost of between Pounds 2,000 and Pounds 5,000 per year. About 40 institutions will have to sign up for the scheme to break even. Eventually JSTOR intends to extend the database worldwide.