c/o Katina Strauch
209 Richardson Avenue
MSC 98, The Citadel
Charleston, SC 29409

SPECIAL REPRINTVOLUME 18, NUMBER 1

ISSN: 1043-2094™
FEBRUARY 2006

“Linking Publishers, Vendors and Librarians”

I Hear the Train A Comin’ —Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Column Editor: Greg Tananbaum (President, The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2809 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 202, Berkeley, CA
94705; Phone: 510-665-1200 x.117; Fax: 510-665-1201) <greg@bepress.com> www.bepress.com

Several years ago, our company (TheBerkeley Electronic Press) began
publishing peer-reviewed, born digital journals. As an experiment, we offered all of our articles under what we deemed a“quasi-open access” policy. The idea was that,
although we are a commercial publisher thathopes to make money, we nonetheless would be
best served by having as wide a readership aspossible. We thus allowed nonsubscribers toaccess our content by completing a short guest
registration form. The form allows us to informtheir library of their interest in reading our journals. When libraries were convinced of sufficient interest in the journal, we reckoned, theywould subscribe, and afterwards access for all
faculty, staff, and students at that institution
would be immediate, with no more forms to fillout.
This model has proven to be a great successfor us. Since that experiment began five years
ago, we have begun deploying our technology
in other areas of the academy as well, notably
institutional repositories. Dozens of schools
now use our repository technology — Digital
Commons, co-marketed with ProQuest. These
repositories house a wealth of interesting andvaluable scholarly information. It seemed likea logical extension to us to capture and display
this open access content alongside the 30 quasiopen access commercial journals we publish
under our own imprint. When we announcedplans for this co-mingling — called
ResearchNow — at ICOLC this past spring, it
met with intense discussion. Some felt strongly
that there are open access materials, and there
are commercial journals, and conscious or unconscious attempts to blur the line were problematic.
This ICOLC debate over ResearchNow set
me to thinking. Are there other projects thatrethink traditional divisions between “free” and“subscription” materials? Who is charting new84

business models for scholarly communication,in nuance, rather than the broad brushstrokes ofopen access and commercial content? How did
their models emerge, where do they break fromthe traditional norms of scholarly publishing,what have they learned to date from their efforts, and what do these lessons portend for thefuture?
Katina Strauch was kind enough to provide
an excellent forum to examine these matters at
the 2005 Charleston Conference. I had thehonor of moderating asession entitled, “TheConfluence of Open
Access and LicensedContent.” The session
examined a number ofemerging models thatrethink traditional divisions between “free”
and “subscription”
materials. Presentations were given on
the specific efforts of
the American Political
Science Association’s Political Research Online
service (http://www.political science.org),
Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations
Review’s new home within the School of Industrial and Labor Relations’ institutional repository (http://digital commons. ilr.cornell.edu/ilrreview), Alexander Street Press’s “free to theworld”
databases(http://www.alexanderstreetpress.com), and theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s endowed content (http://plato.stanford.edu). In
this month’s column, I will look at the latter as afascinating case study of a new way to fund thedissemination of scholarly information.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(SEP) — located at http://plato. stanford.edu —was launched in 1995 to serve as a “dynamicreference work” covering all areas of philoso-

Against the Grain / Special Reprint — February 2006

phy. The goal of a dynamic reference work is
not just to grow in word count or number of entries. Rather, entries are meant to be evolving
rather than static, and can be changed as newdevelopments emerge in the field. Each entry ismaintained and kept up to date by an expert orgroup of experts in the field. Currently, an editorial board of 100 distinguished philosophers
oversee information across 45 topics (e.g., aesthetics, metaphysics). These board members
solicit contributions from authors around theworld (a small number of submissions are unsolicited), vet thedrafts, oversee postings to thesite, and work with authors tokeep their contributions current
as the scholarship in their topic
evolves. In this latter regard,readers, too, play an importantrole. They are encouraged tocontact the thousand or so contributing authors directly withcomments, corrections, and othersuggestions for improvements.
As of late 2005, some 750 entries
have been posted to the SEP, typically in the
10,000 word range. For a complete list, see
http://plato.stanford.edu/published.html.
While the content maintained within theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and thedynamic reference work approach are exemplary(indeed, the project recently received the Best
Content Award from the Charleston Advisor in
its Fifth Annual Readers’ Choice Awards), it is
the unique business model that I wish to examine in greater detail. The SEP is maintained on
an annual budget of approximately $200,000.
This includes 1.7 FTE, servers and other technology, as well as a small overhead allocationfrom Stanford. With the project managers committed to long-term unrestricted access for all,several funding options were discussed. Evencontinued on page 85<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Against the Grain / Special Reprint — February 2006

“Linking
Publishers, Vendors
and Librarians”

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publishers, book jobbers, andsubscription agents. ATG is aunique collection of reports on theissues, literature, and people that
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tually, the SEP crafted a most unusual model.
It convinced Stanford University, its host, topartner with a number of libraries and libraryconsortia for the purpose of building a protected
operating fund. In other words, they set out toraise an endowment. After some negotiation,
they enlisted the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET), the International Coalitionof Library Consortia (ICOLC), the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and Indiana University Libraries to raise $3 million over the course of 3 years.
At the same time, Stanford agreed to raise$1.125 million from private individuals and corporations. The intention is for the SEP to thenlive off the interest on that $4.125 million fund.
The Stanford fundraising tentacles are legend, but from what sources would the libraries
raise their share? Working with the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, they drew up atarget list of libraries at academic institutions
offering degrees in philosophy. Beyond thewarm feeling one gets from contributing to thegreater good, the libraries were provided someconcrete incentives and assurances. The SEP
Web pages accessed by participating universities’ readers are to be stamped with a customized banner acknowledging the support of thelocal library. Contributing libraries have accessto the Encyclopedia’s quarterly archives as asingle compressed file, providing a local archive
option should the project ever terminate. Importantly, contributors are ensured governing
input over the project.
Another intriguing aspect of the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy funding model is
this: Stanford University has agreed to return
all library contributions (together with any interest and appreciation in excess of the annual
payout) should the SEP project ever terminate.
This is a unique element in the business plan:
the libraries will see that their contribution appreciates through endowment management as itis put to work, yet is protected so they can in-vest in some other worthy open access project
should this project ever cease.
So, is that warm feeling combined with thesepractical benefits enough to secure mass participation? If the price is right, yes. In the UnitedStates, the requested amount is $5,000 a year
for three years for Ph.D. institutions, $2,000 ayear for schools offering Master’s degrees, and$1,000 for institutions with undergraduate programs. More than 400 libraries worldwide havecommitted to the project. Combined with aNational Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant, the library fundraising arms securedcommitments of $1.3 million in its first year.
To be sure, there is a free rider problem that
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has
not fully overcome. Some schools have not contributed (and may not be aware of the importance of their contribution), but nonetheless benefit from the contributions of others. The SEP
has an outreach plan that targets institutions
meeting criteria such as size, location, the kindof degree in philosophy it awards, and so forth.
When a reader from one of the targeted institutions attempts to access an entry, the system (using IP checking) returns a note at the top of thepage gently reminding the reader to speak to his/her library about the benefits of financial participation. The hope is that, much like NPR’s
pledge drives (or bepress’s own quasi-open access policy), the demonstrated researcher interest will convince the library to support themodel.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
is forging a new path in scholarly publishing. Itis neither a subscription service nor an author
pays model. Its content is free, but only so longas the community that benefits from it provides
the necessary funding to attain its endowment
threshold. It is operated not by individual scholars or university administrators or libraries, but
by a combination of all the above. Will theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy succeed? Early returns, both in terms of content
quality and financial planning, are promising.
Will the model be replicated and extended byothers? Time will tell.

Name___________________________________________________
Address___________________________________________________I Hear the Train A Comin’
from page 84<http://www.against-the-grain.com> 85