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The papers are from JSTOR, not MIT. MIT pays for a subscription to JSTOR like many other universities do.

But is it clear that MIT does not also store its research papers in JSTOR instead of making them publicly available? Reading the article I did not get that impression.

While many researchers at MIT publish in journals that sometimes have restrictions on the distribution of their papers (exclusivity, etc.), most MIT publications are issued via:

1) DSpace http://dspace.mit.edu (an open publishing platform for academic material. Most all theses produced by MIT researchers can be accessed by the public here)

2) as an MIT technical report (mostly published via dspace)

3) as an MIT "Working Paper"

You can find more information here: http://libraries.mit.edu/docs/research-publications.html

Certainly, a huge number of MIT publications do end up being mirrored in JSTOR, but they are usually published via whatever journal or conference proceeding they are accepted to first. If an author cannot find a journal that is willing to publish their paper, then they will probably issue it as an MIT technical report.

Ok, that's actually useful information. I find MIT's approach fairly reasonable - may be all others should follow suit and JSTOR-like walls would not be necessary some day.

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