The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) needs your support. Over 1000 professional philosophers are donating their time and labor to collaboratively write, referee, and maintain our reference work. Our goal is to offer high-quality and authoritative discussions of values, science, religion, politics, and ideas in general. Our authors and editors are jointly producing entries on such topics as democracy, civil rights, quantum mechanics, consciousness, voluntary euthanasia, and on many other topics important to the human condition, all freely available. To cover the annual costs of administering and supporting this volunteer effort, Stanford University has partnered with the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) for the purpose of building an endowment fund for the SEP. The National Endowment for the Humanities has endorsed and supported our efforts with a Challenge Grant of $500,000.
Three Ways to Support The SEP
- Become a Friend of the SEP and Access PDFs.
By paying modest membership dues to join the
Friends of the SEP Society,
members are entitled to download very high quality PDF
(Portable Document Format, a.k.a. Acrobat) versions of SEP
entries.
(Read More) - Make a Donation. We hope SEP
readers will support the SEP by making a generous tax-deductible
contribution.
(Read More) - SEPIA for Libraries. We encourage
libraries and other institutions to support the SEP by joining the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy International Association,
and receiving member benefits.
(Read More)
In addition, we ask professional scholars to please read the open letter addressed to them, and start a constructive dialogue with librarians at your institution to enlist their support for the SEP.
Open Letters to Our Constituents
An Open Letter to Professional Scholars
A List of Other Documents of Interest
- ICOLC's Call for Global Library Community Action (PDF document, January 25, 2005 version)
- The Problems With a Traditional Funding Model
- The SEP's Publishing Model
- Recent Access Statistics (SEP Editorial Information page)
- The SEP's Value for Research, Education, the Profession, and the Public
- The SEP's Archives
- The SEP's Editorial Board
- Letters from Professional Organizations in Support of SEP Grant Proposals