JSTOR

JSTOR is a digital library founded in the 90’s. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals but now includes books and other primary sources as well as current issues of journals in the humanities and social sciences. JSTOR offers it’s platform to any one but primarily supports participating institutions (universities, libraries, secondary schools, etc) that pay for access to JSTOR’s content and services. Users can also register for free account and gain access to limited content that are deemed free or open licensed content.

Our Problem Space:

The PALS (Platform Access & Login Services) is an agile product team that I worked on for JSTOR. Our OKR’s (Objectives and Key Results) are linked to improving user access, onboarding, and authentication methods. This means that we are responsible for when a user learns about the product, registers with the product, and actions they take once they revisit. Our primary metric was to report on and increase our authentication conversion rates and improve our UX scorecard metrics. There are several factors that are unique to JSTOR because of their relationship to academic institutions. Users can get access to content by IPs, proxies, social sign-ons, personal accounts, and on-campus networks who all provide different levels of access and support to our users.

Key Details

• Implemented and introduced new login workflows and visual designs

• Added additional access methods to users and participating institutions

• Helped guide the retirement of an existing platform and contributed to the user onboarding for the merging of two products

High Impact Initiatives Completed

• Increased paywall conversion rate by ~2% by introducing new login workflow

• Allowed for improved login workflows for different product teams in 5 new locations that resulted in improved metrics for their own OKRs