Ithaka
Ithaka is a New York–based nonprofit that operates JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R to deliver affordable digital scholarly content, long-term preservation, and research advisory services to academic institutions, libraries, and policymakers worldwide.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2000
- HeadquartersNew York, United States
- Headcount251–500
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Ithaka does
Ithaka is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, headquartered in New York City, that operates a portfolio of digital scholarly infrastructure services aimed at improving access to knowledge, higher education affordability, and the long-term preservation of scholarship. Its three flagship services are JSTOR (a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources), Portico (community-supported digital preservation for e-journals, ebooks, and digital collections), and Ithaka S+R (research and strategic advisory services for universities, foundations, and policymakers). Supporting offerings include Artstor for digital image collections, Constellate for computational text analysis education, Reveal Digital for open-access collections, Transfer Explorer for credit mobility, JSTOR Access in Prison, the Text Analysis Pedagogy Institute, and the Path to Open open-access monograph program.
The platform is built around licensing, preservation, and research tooling rather than consumer software. JSTOR itself holds over 470 terabytes of curated digital content and serves more than 14,000 libraries across 190 countries, with institutional subscriptions structured by institution type and size. Portico provides durable digital preservation backed by a community-supported funding model, and ITHAKA Labs / JSTOR Labs function as internal innovation units that translate research insights from Ithaka S+R into deployable nonprofit services (e.g., Transfer Explorer, JSTOR Access in Prison, Constellate, TAP Institute). Recent technical expansion has centered on AI literacy programs, AI in scholarly communications advisory, and a new JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services line, signaling a shift from purely archival roles toward governance and standards-setting for emerging technologies in academia.
Revenue is generated primarily through recurring institutional subscriptions to JSTOR and Portico, supplemented by project-based advisory contracts via Ithaka S+R and foundation grants from organizations including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (over $2 million cumulatively across preservation and prison-access programs) and Ascendium Education Group (over $1.3 million across prison-education technology). ITHAKA serves academic libraries, university administrators, faculty, students, and underserved populations such as incarcerated learners, with no single publicly disclosed concentration. The organization is governed by a Board of Trustees, led by President Kevin M. Guthrie, and underwent a leadership transition at its advisory arm in early 2026 with Martin Kurzweil succeeding Catharine Bond Hill as Managing Director of Ithaka S+R.
Ithaka firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Ithaka
- Legal name
- ITHAKA
- Website
- https://ithaka.org
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2000
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 251–500 employees
- Short description
- Ithaka is a New York–based nonprofit that operates JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R to deliver affordable digital scholarly content, long-term preservation, and research advisory services to academic institutions, libraries, and policymakers worldwide.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Ithaka industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Digital Library Platforms
- NAICS
- Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519), Educational Support Services (611710)
- SIC
- Services-Educational Services (8200), Services-Engineering, Accounting, Research, Management (8700), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Digital Library & Electronic Resources Operations (e-Resources, Repositories, Licensing) (EDAEAGAF)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Digital Archives, Libraries & Institutional Access Platforms (MPAJAMAJ), Open Access Scholarly Journals & Monographs (EDAGAFAJ)
Keywords
Where Ithaka is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- New York
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Ithaka business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Institutional Subscriptions: JSTOR and Portico services are primarily funded through licensing agreements with academic institutions, libraries, and universities worldwide. Institutions pay subscription fees to access digital archives and preservation services.
- Foundation Grants: ITHAKA receives significant grant funding from foundations including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ($1.5 million for JSTOR accessibility in prisons, $527,000 for digital preservation), Ascendium Education Group ($800,000 for higher education in prison technology), and others for specific research and program initiatives.
- Strategic Advisory Services: Ithaka S+R provides research, strategic advice, and technical assistance to universities, policymakers, foundations, and educational organizations, generating revenue through consulting engagements and research contracts.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Annual | Institutional access to JSTOR digital library collections |
| Subscription | Annual | Portico digital preservation services |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels7 records
Ithaka product offering
Product offeringCore offering
ITHAKA is a nonprofit organization that operates digital library and learning platforms including JSTOR (digital archive of academic journals, books, and primary sources), Portico (community-supported digital preservation services for scholarly content), and Ithaka S+R (research and strategic advisory services for higher education). The organization licenses these platforms to academic institutions, libraries, and publishers worldwide, while also providing direct advisory services to universities, policymakers, and foundations.
Product overview
ITHAKA operates as a nonprofit with a portfolio of interconnected services rather than a single unified product. The core offerings include JSTOR (digital library platform), Portico (preservation services), and Ithaka S+R (research and advisory services). Supporting these core services are specialized sub-products: Constellate for text analysis education, Transfer Explorer for credit mobility, JSTOR Access in Prison for incarcerated learners, the Text Analysis Pedagogy (TAP) Institute for teaching text analysis skills, Path to Open for open access monographs, Ithaka Labs for innovation development, JSTOR Labs for technical innovation, and the Generative AI Product Tracker for monitoring AI tools. Together these services aim to improve higher education affordability, student and researcher outcomes, and knowledge preservation across 180 countries.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- JSTOR: A research and teaching platform combined with innovative collections stewardship tools to make information more affordable and accessible
- Portico
- Artstor
- Constellate
- Reveal Digital
- Transfer Explorer
- JSTOR Access in Prison
- ITHAKA Labs
- JSTOR Daily
Products and services
- JSTOR Digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources that helps students, researchers, and educators discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform while preserving content for future generations. Licensed to over 14,000 libraries in 190 countries.
- Portico Community-supported preservation service for e-journals, ebooks, digital collections, newspapers, and other scholarly resources ensuring long-term access to digital content for libraries and publishers.
- Ithaka S+R Research and strategic advisory service providing collaborative strategies, tools, and research to broaden access to higher education and improve student and workforce outcomes. Works with universities, colleges, libraries, publishers, foundations, and policymakers.
- Constellate Text analysis and computational literacy education platform that teaches Python programming tutorials to help researchers analyze textual data using AI and machine learning approaches.
- Transfer Explorer First-of-its-kind national credit mobility platform that helps students understand how their credits apply to degree pathways, supporting credential attainment for working adults.
- JSTOR Access in Prison JSTOR platform adapted to expand access to academic resources for incarcerated learners, overcoming specific hurdles including internet-based access while accounting for diverse Department of Corrections media review practices.
- Text Analysis Pedagogy (TAP) Institute Free online courses teaching text analysis skills, led by JSTOR Labs in partnership with University of Virginia and University of Arizona. Creates open teaching tools including digital notebooks for use by faculty at other institutions.
- Path to Open Community-supported open access monograph program where participating libraries gain early access to newly published university press books that transition to open access after 2-3 years, supporting bibliodiversity and sustainable open access at scale.
- JSTOR Labs Innovation arm of JSTOR that developed open educational resources for teaching artificial intelligence, the Text Analysis Pedagogy Institute, and essay creation tools.
- Generative AI Product Tracker
Quantifiable outcome
- 440% increase in usage globally once titles transitioned to open access in Path to Open program
- +3 more outcomes
Companies that use Ithaka
Customer profileNamed customers4 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Ithaka technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
AI capability9 records
Feature8 records
Ithaka partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core and strategic.
- Aspen Institute College Excellence ProgramcoreManaging the American Talent Initiative with the Aspen Institute since 2016, working to enroll and graduate substantially more students from lower-income backgrounds.
- California State University Systemcore16 CSU campuses participating in Teaching and Learning with AI cohort project and Integrating AI Literacy into the Curricula project.
- PerlegostrategicITHAKA invested in Perlego to make course materials accessible and affordable, supporting the organization's mission to improve access to education.
- American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)corePartnered with JSTOR to design Path to Open, a community-supported open access monograph program launched in 2023, where participating libraries gain early access to newly published university press books that transition to open access after 2-3 years.
- University PressescoreMore than 50 university presses and scholarly publishers participated in Path to Open pilot program, working collaboratively to expand access to scholarly work through the open access transition model.
- Boston Library ConsortiumcoreLibrary consortium participating in Path to Open, demonstrating the value of shared investment model for expanding access to scholarly content through collaborative open access initiatives.
- HypothesisstrategicITHAKA invested in Hypothesis, an open-annotation leader, to support innovation in scholarly communication and research tools.
- University of Virginia and University of ArizonastrategicPartnered with ITHAKA's JSTOR Labs Team to lead the Text Analysis Pedagogy (TAP) Institute, funded by National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Reveal DigitalstrategicReveal Digital joined ITHAKA in 2019, expanding ITHAKA's portfolio of digital scholarship and research tools.
- Springer NaturecoreSpringer Nature partnered with ITHAKA to include Scientific American on JSTOR, expanding coverage of scientific fields and benefiting interdisciplinary researchers.
Scale indicators14 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Ithaka competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- ProQuest (Clarivate): ProQuest operates one of the largest scholarly content and library information platforms globally, including dissertation databases, primary source archives, and ebook collections distributed to academic libraries—directly comparable to JSTOR's academic library distribution model and overlapping substantially in customer base and content type.
- EBSCO Information Services: EBSCO is a major provider of research databases, e-journals, and discovery services to academic and public libraries worldwide, making it a directly comparable peer in subscription-based scholarly content distribution to the same institutional buyer segment ITHAKA serves.
- Project MUSE: Project MUSE distributes peer-reviewed academic journals and books from scholarly publishers to academic libraries on a subscription and open access basis, directly competing with JSTOR in humanities and social sciences content distribution to the same institutional customers.
Broad incumbents
- Elsevier: Elsevier is the largest commercial academic publisher, distributing subscription-based scholarly journals and books to the same academic library customers as JSTOR, but as part of a much broader commercial publishing portfolio rather than a mission-driven nonprofit.
- Springer Nature: Springer Nature is a major commercial academic publisher and existing ITHAKA partner (Scientific American on JSTOR), operating subscription and open access journals and books that overlap significantly with JSTOR's content categories and library distribution channels.
- Wiley: Wiley is a major academic publisher with extensive journal and book offerings distributed to academic libraries, and is relevant as the prior employer of ITHAKA's new AI in Scholarly Communications practice lead—directly comparable in scholarly content distribution to libraries.
Emerging players
- Semantic Scholar: Semantic Scholar is an AI-powered academic search and discovery tool that competes for researcher attention as a starting point into scholarly literature, representing an emerging threat to traditional library platforms like JSTOR by potentially disintermediating research discovery.
- Internet Archive: Internet Archive operates a large-scale digital preservation and access mission comparable to Portico and JSTOR, including digitized books, journals, and web archives, overlapping with ITHAKA's preservation and access mission but with broader scope and different funding model.
- OpenAlex: OpenAlex is an open catalog of scholarly papers, authors, and institutions that provides metadata and citation data comparable to JSTOR's underlying bibliographic and research infrastructure—representing an open-data alternative that could complement or compete with JSTOR's data assets.
Others
- CLOCKSS: CLOCKSS is a community-governed digital preservation archive for academic content, and a direct partner of Portico in ITHAKA-led Mellon-funded preservation projects, making it an adjacent peer in the shared scholarly preservation ecosystem.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat6 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Ithaka social profiles
Digital presenceIthaka compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance1 record
Ithaka financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Ithaka leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles17 records
Ithaka subsidiaries and ownership
Company hierarchySubsidiaries7 records
Ithaka funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Ithaka M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A1 record
Investments1 record
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Ithaka
What does Ithaka do?
ITHAKA is a nonprofit organization that operates digital library and learning platforms including JSTOR (digital archive of academic journals, books, and primary sources), Portico (community-supported digital preservation services for scholarly content), and Ithaka S+R (research and strategic advisory services for higher education). The organization licenses these platforms to academic institutions, libraries, and publishers worldwide, while also providing direct advisory services to universities, policymakers, and foundations.
Is Ithaka a public or private company?
Ithaka is a private company. It is classified as nonprofit foundation owned and is currently operating.
When was Ithaka founded?
Ithaka was founded in 2000. It employs 251 to 500 people.
Where is Ithaka based?
Ithaka is headquartered in New York, United States, in the North America region.
How does Ithaka make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Institutional Subscriptions are the primary driver. The others are foundation Grants and strategic Advisory Services.
Who are Ithaka's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are ProQuest (Clarivate), EBSCO Information Services and Project MUSE. Broad incumbents are Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley. Emerging players are Semantic Scholar, Internet Archive and OpenAlex. CLOCKSS is listed as an others.
Does Ithaka have an API?
No public API is recorded for Ithaka.
What industry is Ithaka in?
Ithaka's product category is Digital Library Platforms. Its primary akta.pro industry code is EDAEAGAF, Digital Library & Electronic Resources Operations (e-Resources, Repositories, Licensing), with a secondary code of MPAJAMAJ, Digital Archives, Libraries & Institutional Access Platforms. Its NAICS code is 5192 and its SIC code is 8200.