Philosophy encyclopedia seeks funds, Stanford Daily, May 3, 2005. An unsigned news story. Excerpt: 'The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or SEP — one of the most widely used philosophy resources on the Internet — is attempting to raise more than $1 million to keep online access free. The encyclopedia is the brainchild of John Perry, professor of philosophy, and Edward Zalta, senior research scholar at the Stanford Center for the Study of Language and Information, or CSLI. Zalta is the encyclopedia's principal editor...."Basically, the SEP is trying to raise a $4.125 million endowment, and this will cover its annual budget of just under $200,000," Zalta said. "If we can do that, we can keep the SEP open-access and freely available for the long-term." This leaves about $1.125 million for Stanford to raise from private and corporate contributors. "We will ask for small donations from professional philosophers, readers in other academic disciplines and our non-academic readers," Zalta said. "We will also be asking for larger contributions from private individuals with an interest in philosophy."...Encyclopedia entries are contributed by distinguished professors and philosophers from around the world. They are also solicited by invitation from the encyclopedia’s editorial board, which includes three Philosophy Profs. Ken Taylor, Dagfinn Follesdal and Allen Wood. Zalta stressed that the encyclopedia is a perpetual work-in-progress. "Authors are given Web-based, remote-editing access to private copies of their entries on our server," he said. "As new ideas and research are published, they can update their entries." The fact that access to the encyclopedia is free is significant to its student users.'
(PS: SEP is a pioneer in encyclopedia innovation, OA in the humanities, and OA business models. It's the first significant OA resource to attempt to fund itself from an endowment. Here's hoping it succeeds.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/04/2005 11:49:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
