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Exactly, being a non profit only means that they distribute all their profit amongst themselves as salaries or investments.

The data would be much better at the hands of an entity that keeps the data accessible and gives the authors a right to reproduce their works elsewhere. A startup which does this would be excellent.

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You guys are vastly oversimplifying this whole thing. The only reason JSTOR gets access to these documents in the first place is because of licensing agreements with the publishers.

You can try and a start a company that gives it all away for free, but you're not going to be given access to any documents or you'll be sued for releasing the ones you don't have rights to.

This is not as simple as "Just throw that stuff up on a Torrent and we're good to go".

>This is not as simple as "Just throw that stuff up on a Torrent and we're good to go".

As a scientist, that would pretty much solve my access problems, and help me do a better job.

If that were the case, they would not be a non-profit. The IRS zealously audits nonprofits (except for the religious ones) to make sure that their resources are not going to the benefit of insiders. Penalties for such situations are...extreme.

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