JSTOR is a digital repository of academic works founded in 1995 by William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton University. It currently stores and provides access to around 2,000 academic journals, as well as some ebook versions of academic monographs.
Universities and other institutions pay subscription fees for access to JSTOR. JSTOR is a non-profit organization, but receives sizeable annual revenues in the tens of millions of dollars from grants and subscription fees.
JSTOR made news in a negative manner when it pursued federal wire fraud charges against internet activist Aaron Swartz in 2011 after Swartz used his guest access to JSTOR via an affiliation with MIT to download millions of JSTOR articles. The resultant federal criminal case was blamed for Swartz's death by suicide.