Does jstor.org block AI crawlers?

Can AI assistants cite jstor.org?

• ChatGPT search: its search crawlers may read the site
• Claude: its search crawlers may read the site
• Perplexity: its search crawlers may read the site

jstor.org opts out of AI training by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Common Crawl. Training crawlers and answer crawlers are separate: blocking training doesn't by itself remove a site from AI answers.

AI crawler access, bot by bot

How jstor.org compares

• 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; jstor.org is one of them.
• 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; jstor.org is one of them.
• 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; jstor.org does not.
• Among 182 sites of similar popularity, 27% block at least one AI crawler.

The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers

User-agent: *
Disallow: /action
Disallow: /api
Disallow: /citation
Disallow: /clockss-manifest
Disallow: /doi/abs
Disallow: /doi/xml
Disallow: /feedback
Disallow: /purchase
Disallow: /register/
Disallow: /stable/full
Disallow: /stable/suppl
Disallow: /stable/view
Disallow: /start-session
Disallow: /stoken
Disallow: /tc/accept
Disallow: /token
Disallow: /topic
Disallow: /ui_log
Disallow: /userimages
Allow: /action/showLogin
Allow: /action/showJournal
Allow: /action/showPublication
Allow: /action/showSubscriptionJournalsAsXml
Allow: /action/showXml

User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.

Sites with a similar AI policy

• justdial.com · 1 blocked
• mydramalist.com · 7 blocked
• litnet.com · 1 blocked
• ilmeteo.it · 6 blocked
• livescore.com · 1 blocked
• mundodeportivo.com · 1 blocked
• zedge.net · 1 blocked
• gazzetta.it · 6 blocked

All sites that are “blocks ai training, allows ai answers” →