http://plato.stanford.edu/fundraising/donate.html
(Librarians please register your institution's commitment with SOLINET. We are grateful to these institutions that have already registered support.)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 Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET), the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and Indiana University Libraries for the purpose of building a protected operating fund for the SEP. While the library organizations attempt to raise $3 million for the SEP over the course of 3 years (primarily from libraries at academic institutions offering degrees in philosophy), we here at Stanford hope to raise $1.125 million from private individuals and corporations during that same time period. The SEP would then live off the interest on that $4.125 million fund.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has endorsed and supported our efforts by awarding the library organizations (SOLINET, ICOLC, and SPARC) a $500,000 Challenge Grant (in December 2004). So if the library organizations can raise $1.5 million from their member libraries (i.e., half of their $3 million goal), the NEH will contribute $500,000, bringing the libraries to 2/3 of their fund-raising goal. Indiana University Libraries has now sponsored a special membership organization, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy International Association (SEPIA), for the purpose of collecting membership dues. These membership dues are eligible for matching funds from the NEH.
As a reader of the SEP, we are asking you to help us here at Stanford to reach our fundraising goal of $1.125 million, by making a generous tax-deductible contribution, so that the SEP can continue to remain freely available to everyone with access to the world wide web. We hope that either our fundraising flyer (linked in above) or one of the open letters (linked in below) will convince you that our project is worthy of your support. 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.
SEP Press Release (November 2005) (in PDF)
SEP Press Release (February 2006) (in PDF)
List of Libraries Which Have Registered Their Commitment
Open Letters to Our Constituents
An Open Letter to Professional Scholars
An Open Letter to General Readers
Why Should Libraries at Small Colleges or Public Universities Support the SEP?
Articles About the SEP
- From SEP to SEPIA: How and Why Indiana University is Helping the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by Colin Allen and Cecile Jagodzinski, in Against the Grain, 18/4 (September 2006): 42–43.
- " The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A University/Library Partnership in Support of Scholarly Communications and Open Access," by Edward N. Zalta, in College & Research Libraries News (a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries), 67/8 (September 2006): 502–504, 507.
- I Hear the Train A Comin', by Greg Tananbaum (President, Berkeley Electronic Press), in Against the Grain, 18/1 (February 2006): 84–85. Reprinted with permission from the author and publisher.
- The Best Content Award, by The Charleston Advisor, Volume 7/No. 2 (October 2005), p. 3.
- Review: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by Heather Morrison and Michael McIntosh, The Charleston Advisor, Volume 6/No. 3 (January 2005): 51–53.
- Review: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Wants Libraries to do WHAT?, by Margaret Landesman, in The Charleston Advisor, Volume 6/No. 3 (January 2005): 53–55. (The PDF containing the Morrison/McIntosh review also contains the Landesman review. Scroll to p. 53.)
- Update to Review on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by Heather Morrison and Mike McIntosh, The Charleston Advisor, Volume 9/No. 1 (July 2007).
A List of Other Documents Linked into the Open Letters
- 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