FREE JOURNALS. JSTOR offers free, limited access to a subset of its library. Screen shot from JSTOR.org.

MANILA, Philippines - Any college student looking for thesis sources or scholarly information has probably heard of JSTOR, the online journal storage service.

In a move that will probably be greeted by a sigh of relief from cash-strapped grad students, JSTOR has announced a new initiative that will give everyone with connectivity to the Internet limited free access to journals.

JSTOR's Register & Read program enables account holders to access to a subset of approximately 1,200 journals across 700 publishers within the JSTOR journal library. Users can basically store up to 3 items on their account shelf, and are only allowed to switch them with something new after 14 days on the shelf. Users can ever buy some of the items offered to allow it a permanent place on their shelf.

One caveat noted by the educational website Inside Higher Ed is that it asks for some personal data in exchange for the access.

As their report notes, "The only thing a user must hand over to gain access to Register & Read is personal information, including institutional affiliation and field of study. That information is shared with JSTOR and interested publishers and libraries."

Whether that's something users are willing to give up will ultimately depend on how badly they need information. Either way, it's an interesting experiment for Ithaka, the nonprofit organization behind JSTOR. - Rappler.com