Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)A Call for ICOLC Initiated Global Community Action
Instructions and Background Information R2 01/25/05
FOR general distribution
Authored on behalf of ICOLC by Tom Sanville (tom@ohiolink.edu)
FOREWORD
This Call to Action is extensive and contains a great deal of information. But there are still inherent
uncertainties; some cannot be resolved except by responding to the call, while others have not yet
been fully defined. Though this is a global call to action, its success depends on how well the
consortia, library, and philosophy leaders in each geographic area mold its ideas to fit their locality or
region.
It is the intent of the author, Solinet, and the SEP to respond to any questions raised by creating
supplements to this document on a periodic basis. Please email any questions to the contacts noted
below.
The Call to Action is described in Sections I. and II. For more extensive background on the SEP
please read Sections III. through IV.
Table of Contents
Page 2: Section I. Problem Statement and Opportunity – Why the SEP?
Page 4: Section II. A Call to Action - ICOLC Global Funding Initiative For Stanford Encyclopedia Of
Philosophy
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

The General Approach – p4
The Nature of Funding – p4
Funding Guidelines – p4
What About the Philosophy Departments? – p5
What Exactly Does the Community Get? – p6
What is the SEP Funding Request Based On? – p6
What is the Nature of the 3-year Contribution? – p7 Major revisions
What are the Administrative Processes? – p8

Page 10: Section III. What is the SEP
Page 11: Section IV. Why Should Academic and Library Communities Care
Page 12: Section V. The SEP’s Current Financial Situation and How this will Change
Page 13: Section VI. Three Models to Fund the SEP and Keep It Open Access
Page 16: Appendix- Annual Contribution/Membership Dues Guidelines

SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

1

I. Problem Statement and Opportunity – Why the SEP?
The global community of academic philosophers has uniquely collaborated to create, maintain, andexpand the SEP - a work of high quality that serves a broad constituency. It has become a criticalresource and is being widely used in courses and to support research around the world, as will be
documented below. It has survived to date with the volunteer effort of that community, institutional
support, and a series of grants. This combined formula will no longer prove viable by the end of
2005.
Unless this community, in concert with a broader community of libraries and Philosophy departments,
looks creatively at how it can invest in the SEP’s future we all risk several possible unattractive
outcomes: (1) The SEP ceases to exist. (2) It continues to exist but at a compromised level and fails
to achieve its full potential. (3) It survives but access becomes greatly restricted to subscribing
institutions. (4) It survives with subscription-based access and becomes a unit of a commercial
publisher subject to the operations and economics of the acquiring firm. The SEP has already been
contacted by several commercial publishers willing to assume all its costs in return for becoming its
publisher. Before any of these unattractive alternatives take shape we, as library and Philosophy
communities, must consider what will be in our best long-term interests with respect to: (a) content
richness, (b) affordability, and (c) maximum access by users world–wide.
We have an opportunity to use the SEP as a pilot, an experiment, to see if the global community can
act together to create a new approach to taking ownership of scholarly publishing. Can we forge anapproach which expands accessibility to scholarly information and do so in a way which compareswith other initiatives such as SPARC, BioOne, Highwire Press, and the growing number of open
access journals? We are in a time of rapid change. We have an opportunity to demonstrateleadership in creating a new global solution. The SEP was brought to the ICOLC’s attention by
SPARC and by JISC from the UK. After hearing an impressive presentation at the spring 2003
ICOLC meeting, the members present agreed to form a small group to begin working with the SEP to
see what creative funding approaches might be considered.
Could we select some project other than the SEP? Possibly, but SEP’s survival clock is ticking. It is aunique and valuable resource to the world. The creators of the SEP have already demonstrated theirability to marshal the resources of the global community of philosophers with a unique workflow
system (see Section III.). This is an important ingredient. The philosophy community isdemonstrating an innovative and significant degree of self-help. With the aid of the global library andphilosophy communities, the SEP has a viable and supportable financial plan for the future. We
should therefore take this opportunity to see if we can succeed in helping the SEP and thus
ourselves. If successful we may create a global model to be used again in similar circumstances.
In Sections III through VI, we will detail the background necessary to understand what the SEP is,
how it was created through a unique community approach, what its value is to us, and how it presents
us with a unique collaborative opportunity to make this resource fully accessible. There are several
alternative ways to prevent the SEP from ceasing to exist or becoming the property of a commercial
or non-commercial publisher. These alternative publishing models are generically described below in
Section VI. The critical point is to contrast these models with the traditional publishing andsubscription model, on which the SEP's annual costs likely would go from $190,000/year (see SectionII) to $300,000-$400,000/year. The annual subscription price would reflect the increased costs of the
traditional publishing model. The authors/editors would require payment (as is standard withreference works by commercial and academic presses), mirror sites that now provide their services
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

2

free would need to be reimbursed, and SEP would incur it share of publisher marketing andadministrative costs.
In Section II, we are recommending a specific course of action, namely, that ICOLC members andother consortia mobilize the global library and academic community to create a long-term solution fora freely available SEP through the creation of an endowment. This effort will be a test of the ability of
our consortia to take a leadership role in mustering the resources of the global library and academic
community. No doubt, the success or failure of this effort will be based on the collective initiative ofconsortia throughout the world. But, we should expect others to rally around this effort. SPARC, forone, has reviewed and endorsed this call for action and has agreed to promote the initiative.
Unquestionably, for this to succeed, the philosophy community must stand up and strongly support
this effort. They will be made fully aware of the economic crossroads the SEP is approaching. Our
global effort will be directed at them as well, so as to support, energize, and empower consortia
efforts.
For all those who are asked to participate in this effort, the most uncomfortable aspect will be theinherent uncertainty. There is no neat road map for this effort. On a global level, there are notalways simple or consistent answers that apply to everyone, nor should there be. Taken as a whole,
the response must be adequate to reach the financial goal. How that is achieved is left to thecreativity of the community at the local and regional level. To offer a neat global prescription would
be convenient. But that is unrealistic and undesirable. We are not trying to duplicate theunsuccessful global pricing efforts of vendors. We are attempting a wholly new approach, but it
requires the local initiative and flexibility of our global community.
Addendum, January 23, 2005:
SOLINET, ICOLC and SPARC were awarded a $500,000 Challenge Grant in December 2004 forthe support of the SEP according to the plan described below. For a discussion as to how this has
affected our fund-raising plan, see the final subsection (“What is the Nature of the 3-year
Contribution?”) in Section II below.

SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

3

Section II. – A Call to Action - ICOLC GLOBAL FUNDING INITIATIVE FOR STANFORDENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHYThe General Approach
The SEP has proposed a formula for combining contributions from the NEH, Stanford University, andthe academic/library community so as to generate the necessary endowment to make the SEP
independent and sustainable into the future. The academic/library community needs to contribute$3,000,000 of the $4,000,000 to be raised. (Stanford University will raise the other $1,000,000.) To
make this practical, we are creating a special membership organization for the support of the SEP
and will be seeking three years of annual contributions in the form of donations or membership duesto this organization. The totals would yield $1,000,000 over each of the years ending mid-2005, mid2006, and mid-2007. After 2007 no more payments would be required; instead, the SEP will haveestablished an operating fund which achieves free and open access for the future. Accumulation
would be a global effort. World-wide there are over 2000 philosophy departments and institutes, withmost offering degrees at the bachelors, masters, or Ph.D. levels. These departments, and theirparent institutions in general, will benefit from the continued development of the SEP.
The Nature of Funding
How does the global academic/library community generate $1 million per year for 3 years? Our
approach asks for three consecutive annual contributions or membership dues from institutions andconsortia in as many states, provinces and countries as possible. We look to the consortium or
consortia in each area act to coordinate, develop and orchestrate an appropriate local strategy forraising its fair share.
At a global level there is no single satisfactory approach that will provide a precise formula togenerate the necessary $3 million. This is not a pricing-based approach but rather an aggregate
contribution-based approach. The critical singular objective is to reach the overall financial goal. In
reality, given the huge diversity of local politics, organizational structures, and financial andadministrative landscapes, much must be left to local initiative and discretion. For example, one area
might rely heavily on libraries, another area might be able to more directly call upon the philosophy
departments or parent institutions. The key to success is the willingness of consortia, worldwide, totake the lead in “thinking globally, and acting locally”. If consortia will take the initiative success canbe achieved. The strategy is to achieve our objective efficiently through global group action. This will
also simplify the administrative process.
Funding Guidelines
To show how we can achieve this global effort we have chosen to provide an example of one simple
method to establish geographical guidelines. To reiterate, the critical singular objective is to reachthe overall financial goal. As a global voluntary effort we cannot call any guideline or goal a strict
obligation, regardless of how it is derived. What is critical is that each contribution is important
regardless of it relationship to any guideline or goal. There is no perfect approach and frankly, we areguessing as to the likely and hoped for outcome. We considered suggesting more elaborate models
but given the great diversity our global community we recognize the inadequacy of any single
approach. Plus, as a voluntary effort, the main objective is to illustrate a scenario of relative
guidelines that can result in the successful accumulation of the aggregate goal. Neither too little nor
too much should be made of the guidelines.
We also recognize the wide variations in the size, nature and overlap among library consortia worldwide. There is no simple way for libraries and consortia to eliminate local ambiguities that result fromSEP ICOLC Call to Action January 20054

overlap and differences among consortia. We can only ask that those who know best, the local
administrators, seek to minimize the confusion this might cause.
Three factors were combined to generate the guidelines offered here. First, our objective is togenerate at least $1 million per year, if not more, for 3 years. Second, we have considered thenumber of philosophy departments across the globe as a good general measure of relative interest.
(The lists of philosophy departments have been graciously donated to us by the Philosophy
Documentation Center, the express purpose of which was to support this effort on behalf of the SEP.)
Third, the general parameters we considered, namely, English versus non-English speaking country,
developing versus non-developing status, and the likely ability and willingness to contribute, were all
factors which allow us to suggest amounts that could be contributed by each institution with aphilosophy department. In the end, this creates a rough set of relative guidelines across the global
community. Though we may have under- or over-estimated individual guidelines, what really mattersis the total combined actual annual three-year commitment that is made by the global community. If
every institution were to make a commitment to contribute the amount suggested by the guidelines,
we would generate close to $2 million per year. Should that happen, there are several possibilities.
(1) Some of the money would be used to reduce the amounts to be requested from the NEH and to
be raised from private donors. Some of the money would be used to improve the product above andbeyond the normal operational costs and maintenance. (3) Finally, institutions might not have to pay
the full amount indicated by their commitments (see below).
The number of Philosophy departments and annual guidelines per country during the 3 years of fundraising are summarized in the table at the end of this document. From this table a general sense of
average per institution annual contribution can be calculated. Detailed institutional lists of Philosophy
departments by country are found at http://silver.ohiolink.edu/ioclc/ . The US and Canada lists are bystate and province with guidelines indicated for Bachelors, Masters, and PhD level programs. On a
per department or institution basis, the guidelines begin at a very modest level. It is hoped that theamount suggested by the guideline, or some amount close to it, can be committed through either acentral funding approach, a reasonable division among institutions, or a combination of funding
approaches to be determined locally.
What About the Philosophy Departments?
It is important to ask if the philosophy departments are supportive of this effort. The present effort will
be merited only if they are. We would not go forward with this effort unless we fully expected theanswer to be yes. In concert with the release of this document, the SEP:
- has posted a web page for its constituents that has very useful information, including an Open
Letter to Professional Philosophers, the flyer it is using, an outline of why the SEP is important (seesection III of this document as well) and letters of support. See http://plato.stanford.edu/fundraising/ .
- has distributed flyers at the upcoming meetings of the Pacific Division (late March) and Central
Division (late April) of the American Philosophical Association (see copy at
http://silver.ohiolink.edu/ioclc ).
- has sent email to its 800+ authors and 90+ subject editors about our funding drive and include a
copy of this Global Call to Action, asking everyone to organize their departments and endorse theproposal for their libraries- will advertise at the SEP main web pages starting September 1, 2004
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

5

- has coordinated press with SPARC, JISC, the Australian e-Humanities network, PRT-LIBN
Philosophy, Religion, Theology Librarians List, and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities atKing's College London, and others
The SEP is an academic project within Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language andinformation. The Center’s Director reports to the Dean of Research. The SEP relies on the Stanford
Philosophy Department as its Advisory Board. This Advisory Board chooses the members of the
Editorial Board and helps the SEP to set policy. There are 95 members currently on the Editorial
Board. Their names and institutional affiliations can be found at:
http://plato.stanford.edu/board.html
The list of 950+ contributors (with links to their homepages when available) can be found at:
http://plato.stanford.edu/authors.html
What Exactly Does the Community Get?
As previously noted, we are seeking three years of annual donations or membership dues to reach a
total of at least $1,000,000 in each of the years ending mid-2005, mid-2006, and mid-2007. After2007 no more payments would be required. Free and completely open access to the SEP would
then continue into the future indefinitely. Is there is a risk that once the required endowment isestablished Stanford might shut down the project and divert the money to other institutional
purposes? Actually, no. The payment contract will be written so as to address this (see below). As
long as the project continues to demonstrate its commitment to academic excellence (and this seems
highly likely given that Stanford as an institution is so committed), Stanford would have no motivation
to shut down a project that is benefiting an entire profession and the public alike. Further, Stanford
would become more committed to the project as a result of a successful global effort to fund it, andso would the worldwide philosophical community. Even in a worst case scenario, the money
contributed by the libraries to the endowment and the project itself are functionally portable and could
be moved to a new home, though it seems unlikely that this would be necessary. (The Stanford
Provost has approved the institutional arrangements discussed here and below.) The SEP project is asmall operation whose key asset is its web content management software system. But we may wish
to have the SEP address the ability of its community to continue operations in extreme
circumstances.
Libraries which participate in our fund-raising plan would receive a perk in addition to thoseguarantees described below, namely, they would be allowed to download and store the 4 quarterly
archives SEP makes each year. They would be able to use those archives if the SEP main serverand 3 mirror sites ever go down all at once, or if the project ever folds.
The SEP has offered to provide an annual report to the community summarizing (a) its progress inbuilding the encyclopedia entries, (b) its readership and usage statistics, and (c) its financial picture
relative to the expectations expressed here. Such an annual report would be needed for at least 5
years, starting with the 05-06 academic year. The SEP is committed to an ongoing open dialogue
with the community as needed.
What is the SEP Funding Request of $3 million Based On?
The SEP has an established operation that builds and maintains a significant content base.
Currently, an NEH grant supports the operation; this grant expires at the end of the 04-05 academic
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

6

year. On the basis of its current operating budget, total projected costs for the 05-06 academic year
is $192,000, with a projected annual growth rate of 3.6%. Major costs categories are:($ in 000’s)$154.3 Staff salaries and benefits–
75% primary editor
50% professional administrative assistant
25% part-time student assistant
10% student programmer$ 18.0 Contract programming$ 11.7 Endowment-based overhead rate
$ 5.3 Travel & misc. administrative$ 2.5 Computer ( $5,0 every two years)$191.8An endowment of approximately $4 million is necessary to fund this level of annual expense.
The endowment will be raised from three sources, detailed in the table below:(a) The library/academic community will raise $1 million during each of the years ending mid-2005,
mid-2006, and mid-2007, providing the bulk of the endowment. This growing principal will begin
providing income to the SEP in 05-06. Thus, the total library goal is $3 million.
(b) The SEP staff will work with its faculty sponsor and Stanford's Development Office to raise thefinal $1 million dollars over 3 years from public and private sources. This growing principal also will
begin providing income to SEP in 05-06. The Stanford Provost has authorized the SEP to work with
the Director of Principal Gifts to generate this funding support.
(c) Before the endowment reaches sufficient self-supporting size, one more NEH grant is needed, toprovide operating costs during the fund-raising period. The SEP has asked the NEH to provide$100,000 (05-06) and $50,000 (06-07), in a kind of weaning process. NEH has indicated receptivity
to another grant if we can document the commitment and efforts on the part of the libraries andStanford University. There is a good chance of success.
ENDOWMENT SOURCES
Community raised funds
reinvested interest
Total community endowment
Stanford Fund Raise (SFR)
SFR reinvested interest
Total SFR Endowment
TOTAL ENDOWMENT(04-05)(05-06)(06-07)(07-08)08-09)(09-10)(10-11)$1,000,000$1,000,000$37,000$2,037,000$1,000,000$75,369$3,112,369$0$115,158$3,227,527$0$119,418$3,346,945$0$123,837$3,470,782$0$128,419$3,599,201$375,000$13,875$763,875$2,800,875$375,000$28,263$1,167,138$4,279,507$0$43,184$1,210,322$4,437,849$0$44,782$1,255,104$4,602,050$0$46,439$1,301,543$4,772,325$0$48,157$1,349,700$4,948,901$48,000$18,000$66,000$97,776$36,666$134,442$149,394$56,023$205,416$154,921$58,095$213,017$160,653$60,245$220,898$166,598$62,474$229,072$100,000$25,790$125,790$50,000$14,347$64,347

$529
$529

$343
$343

$142
$142

$0
$0

$191,790$191,790$198,789$198,789$205,945$205,945$213,359$213,359$221,040$221,040$229,072$228,998$1,000,000$375,000$375,000$1,375,000

ENDOWMENT ANNUAL INCOME to SEP
Community raised funds
SFR raised funds
TOTAL to SEP from ENDOWMENTOTHER INCOME
NEH
Internal Stanford funding sources
TOTAL OTHER FUNDINGTOTAL FUNDING
Budget Needs

NEH

NEH

What is the Nature of the 3-year Contribution?
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

7

We recognize that in some cases, libraries cannot contribute to an endowment. In previous releasesof this document, we indicated that libraries which cannot position their contribution as a donation
could exercise the option of positioning their contribution as a “subscription”. We noted that donatedmoney would receive greater protections than subscription money, namely, if the SEP project were toterminate, donated money would be returned in full with interest, while subscription money would be
returned on a pro-rated basis. However, as of December 2004, things have changed.
SOLINET, ICOLC and SPARC were awarded a $500,000 Challenge Grant in December 2004! Thismeans that if we can raise half of our fund-raising goal (i.e., raise $1.5 million), the NEH will give us$500,000, bringing us to 2/3 of our fund-raising goal of $3 million. Since money contributed in theform of a subscription does not count towards matching funds for our NEH Challenge Grant, we are
now replacing the subscription option with the option of paying membership dues to a newmembership organization that will be formed for the support of the SEP.
Consequently, payment can be positioned in one of two ways, at the discretion of the consortium orlibrary.
Option #1: Three 1-year membership dues to a special organization formed for the support of the
SEP.
Option #2: Three annual contributions to a “restricted endowment”.
The money paid under either option will be protected should the SEP, all intentions to the contrary,not continue operations into the extended future. Under both options, Stanford would be contractuallybound to protect the community’s financial commitment by the following condition: should the SEP
project ever terminate, libraries contributing money in either form would divide up the SEP’s
endowment in proportion to the amount that was originally paid in.
What are the Administrative Processes for Compiling and Collecting the Contributions?
The process of collecting 3-year commitments commenced in Spring 2004, with commitment
intentions through the consortia due later in 2004. The ICOLC email list is being used to advise
ICOLC members of this opportunity. In turn, each consortium must take the initiative and makesubsequent personal contacts with other local groups and decision makers as needed. We realize
we are leaving the issues of consortia overlap, even possible competition, for local resolution. With
this approach and at this scale there is no simple solution other than to ask for leadership by all incoordinating local efforts.
Payments can be made annually as early as possible, or paid up-front in a lump sum. The official
annual payment due dates will be March 1 of 2005, 2006, and 2007.
ICOLC members OhioLINK and SOLINET have agreed to act as the central points of information
concerning this initiative and SOLINET will record financial commitments and, if our financial goals
are met, will act as the collection agent. SOLINET has agreed to do this at no charge. Primarycontacts are:
Timothy Cherubini
Manager, Library Products & Services
SOLINET
1438 West Peachtree St. NW - Suite 200
Atlanta, Georgia 30309-2955
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

8

Telephone: 404 892 0943 x4992; 800 999 8558 x4992
Fax: 404 892 7879
tcherubini@solinet.net
Tom Sanville
Executive Director
OhioLINK
2455 North Star Rd. Suite 300
Columbus, OH 43221
Telephone 614-728-3600 x322
Fax 614-728-3610
tom@ohiolink.edu
Consortia should inform Tim or Tom of their plans or contact them if they have questions about theprocess. Please provide: (1) the group’s name, (2) a list of institutions covered by this response, (3)contact information for the formal contracting and payment process, and (4) an indication of whether
the consortium intends to pursue payment Option #1 or #2.
Specific questions about the SEP beyond the information covered in Sections III – VI can be directedto:Edward N. Zalta
http://mally.stanford.edu/zalta.html
Senior Research Scholar
CSLI/Cordura Hallzalta@stanford.edu
Stanford University
ph. 650-723-0488
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
fx. 650-725-2166

SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

9

SEP BackgroundIII. What is the SEP?
In existence for 8 years with a viable web-based service, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(SEP) <http://plato.stanford.edu/> is the first scholarly project to have organized an entire profession
to collaboratively write and maintain a "dynamic reference work". The authors of the entries arescholars at universities around the world who have been chosen on the basis of their expertise towrite and maintain an entry on a philosophical topic. These authors upload new entries andmaintain/update their entries as new research becomes available. All new entries and updates toentries are rigorously refereed by a distinguished Board of Editors. With funding from the NEH and
NSF's Digital Libraries Initiative 2, the SEP has built a software workflow system that enables theefforts of authors and subject editors to be administered by a single principal editor with a minimal
support staff.
The goal of the SEP is to build a dynamic reference work that is authoritative, comprehensive,
responsive to research, and useful to scholars (of all levels) and the general public, but which can be
run efficiently on a small staff. This is an academic project in which the publishing house and most of
the personnel involved in the publishing process have been eliminated. Now 850+ authors and 90+
subject editors are contributing to the project and all are working for free. The paid, central
administrative staff consists of 1.75 FTE positions.
This workflow system consists of:(1) web interfaces for the authors, subject editors, and the principal editor, with menu-driven functions
that allow the relevant parties to(a) suggest new entries and prospective authors,(b) issue and accept invitations,(c) download templates and upload entries,(d) view and edit entries for the purpose of refereeing them,(e) remotely update/revise entries in a private part of the server,(f) display original and revised entries side-by-side with the differences highlighted (forrefereeing updates to entries), and(g) accept, reject or publish entries;(2) a master workflow tracking system that provides back-end data processing for the actions taken at
the web-interfaces and supplies the principal editor's web interfaces with greater access to
information, so that he/she can have `at-a-glance' administrative control over the various parts of theworkflow; and(3) an automaton that, on a nightly basis, checks the state of every entry, determines who owes workby what date, compares the date with the current date, and, if necessary, sends out email reminders
on an appropriate schedule.
SEP’s publishing model is unique and differs from that of electronic journals and preprint exchanges
in the following ways. Electronic journals: (1) typically do not update the articles they publish, (2) do
not aim to publish articles on a comprehensive set of topics, but rather, for the most part, publish
articles that are randomly submitted by the members of the profession (with the exception of special
journal issues that are narrowly focused on a single topic) (3) typically serve a narrow audience ofspecialists, and (4) do not have to deal with the asynchronous activity of updating, refereeing, and
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 200510

tracking separate deadlines for entries, since they are published on a synchronized schedule.
Preprint exchanges not only exhibit features (1), (2), and (3), but also do not referee their publications
and so need not incorporate a work-flow system that handles the asynchronous refereeing processthat occurs between upload and publication in a dynamic reference work. None of this is to say thatelectronic journals and preprint exchanges have a faulty design, but rather that the SEP dynamic
reference work is a distinctive new kind of publication that represents a new information structure, a
new digital libraries concept, and thus a new test bed for research in information technology.
The SEP prepares fixed editions, on a quarterly basis, of the entire Encyclopedia and makes
them available on the web. Since the entries in the active portion of the SEP are often revised andupdated, they are unsuitable for the purposes of scholarly citation. But the fixed version of these
entries, in the Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer Editions of the SEP, can be properly cited (ISSN
1095-5054).
The SEP is of broad interest. It straddles both the sciences and the humanities. There are entries in
35 subject areas, including philosophy of science, aesthetics, history of ideas, feminism, ethics(theoretical and applied), social and political philosophy, logic, etc.
There currently are 1501 projected entries in the SEP, of which 971 have been commissioned and566 written (as of July 30, 2004). The 566 entries average 9,500 words/entry, and though there are
not as many entries as found in the commercial Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, manyof the Routledge entries are less than 1,000 words, and their average entry length is somewhere
between 2,000 and 3,000 words. SEP expects to have another 250 entries online by the end of the2005 academic year, and possibly another 250 new commissions. The primary focus will be on
entries that are the most important subjects of current research, so that the SEP will be as"complete" as possible with regard to active areas of research. But as a dynamic reference work, it
will grow, evolve, and adapt as research and knowledge advances.
IV. Why Should the Academic and Library Communities Care? How Important is the SEP to All of
Us?
The SEP is currently a free web service and has one principal website (at Stanford University) andthree mirror sites (at universities in Sydney, Amsterdam, Leeds). It has combined statistics in excess
of 300,000 accesses/week. This level of activity indicates that SEP has become the premier sourceof authoritative information about philosophy on the World Wide Web. The statistics and studies
described below tend to support this claim.
Consortia and libraries can determine SEP usage from their own institutions. Go to
http://leibniz.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/library/usage.cgi
and type in domain name such as "stanford.edu" or "kcl.ac.uk". This engine will present usage
statistics for the current academic year (from Sept 2003 to date) and for the previous academic year.
Information is presented about the number of (non-unique) entries downloaded and the machine
host-names on campus. Please keep in mind that if you have multiple or variant domain names not
all searches will be reflected under one lookup. Note the wide variety of academic departments on
campus other than philosophy having computers that access the SEP.
- Google analysis
The SEP staff conducted a Google search on the titles/topics of the first 100 SEP entries:
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 200511

-75% of the time, the SEP entry on the title/topic was at the top of the list of sites
returned. (Google ranks sites on the basis of the number of links to those sites.)
94% of the time, the SEP entry was in the top 10 sites returned.

- According to an April 2002 user survey:- students are 52% of all SEP users, researchers are 9%, instructors are 14%, others are25%- Universities represent 89% of student users, 54% of researcher users, and 87% of instructorusers- 24% of users are at US News & WR Top 20 National Universities, 21% of users are Top
Grad Depts in Philosophy- Use is broad-based by discipline. Specialization of SEP users listed by StudentsResearchers-Instructors, Philosophy (29%-42%-54%), Math, computer or nat. sciences(22%-38%-17%), History, English, other humanities (13%-4%-10%), Social sciences (11%2%-6%), All other (26%-14%-13%)
The closest competitor to the SEP is the commercial Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Its cost
per year varies depending on the level of use desired. There is no residual access to the electronic
version should a subscription be cancelled. The 2003 prices were:
1-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION
Limited simultaneous users
Max # Users
1
2-4
5-9
Each addl user

US $
$ 700
$1,100$1,500$ 125

Can $$1,050$1,650$2,250$ 188

FTE-Based: Unlimited simultaneous users
Full-Time Enrollment
0-50005-10,000
10-30,000
30-50,000
50,000+US $$ 880$1,500$2,100$2,520
Negotiation

Can. $$1,320$2,250$3,150$3,780
Negotiation

3-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION (10% discount off 1-Year Rates)

V. The SEP’s Current Financial Situation and How This Will Change
The SEP was funded from 1995-1997 by the Center for the Study of Language and Information, at
Stanford University, where the project was conceived, designed, and implemented. Its history offederal grant support is:
1998-2000, NEH (Preservation & Access) Grant #PA-23167-98, $131,400
2000-2003, NSF (Digital Libraries Initiative 2) Grant #IIS-9981549, $528,900
2003-2005, NEH (Preservation & Access) Grant #PA-50133-03, $300,828

SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

12

The current NEH grant will expire in September 2005. SEP needs to be on the road to self-sufficiency
thereafter.
Funding under the NSF grant was $180,000/year, and it is $150,000/year under the current NEH
grant. However, by 2005, the Principal Editor will move to 75% time and SEP will replace somestudent assistance with lower-turnover, professional editorial assistance. Thus, SEP anticipates theannual budget in October 2005 to be $191,000/year. At $250,000/year, SEP could do a lot more –such as additional processing, both at the "front end" (i.e., to enhance quality-control, uniformity,
informativeness, cross-linking, etc., of the entries themselves) and at the "back end" (in terms ofworkflow, search capabilities, etc.).
SEP is committed to seeking grants to underwrite the technical improvements and advances beyondroutine operations and maintenance.
VI. Three Models By Which the Libraries Fund the SEP and Keep it Open Access.
In principle, the SEP would prefer to continue to offer completely free and open access to its content
over the WWW, so that a wide variety of people, with different levels of education and from different
parts of the world, may continue to use it. Alternatively, the SEP could disappear behind the all too
familiar subscription wall. Only those who pay would get access. In this latter case, the SEP might
be able to maintain its independence but it also may be required to sell out to a commercial or nonprofit publisher, which would take over the all operations. If sold, the concepts of the community
effort, open access, and cost recovery economics would be lost.
There are several ways to prevent SEP from becoming the property of a commercial/non-profit
publisher. These are generically described below. As noted in Section II, we are suggesting that the
global library and academic community create a long-term solution for a freely available SEP throughthe specific execution of Option A as generically described below. This will be a test of the ability ofconsortia to take a leadership role in mustering the resources of the global library and academic
community.
A. Complete Open Access Underwritten by Endowment
On this model, the SEP would partner with libraries and consortia worldwide to build a $4 million
endowment. The libraries would contribute to this endowment by paying a charter membership, to bemade with 3 annual payments. Thus, for example, instead of paying a recurring charge of $500/year $2000/year for access to the SEP (and which might go up in successive years), a large institution
would make a $7,500 - $15,000 contribution (spread over several years) and then never have to pay
for access again. This payment could be positioned as buying a lifetime membership (perpetual
access) rather than a contribution to an endowment. If enough libraries and consortia contribute (ata rate proportional to size/ability to pay), Stanford would invest all library monies in its endowment(keeping subscribed and donated monies in separate accounts). The SEP would then live on the 5%interest that the University would return to the project each year (reinvesting any excess interest).
Under Models A and B (below), the SEP will naturally look to those libraries which are associatedwith, and serve, professional philosophy departments. Financial cooperation between library andphilosophy departments may be in order. But the usage and survey data make clear that the SEP is
also filling needs in many other fields of specialization, in particular, science, other humanities,
medicine and business.
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

13

B. Complete Open Access Underwritten by Annual Contributions
On this model, the SEP would partner with libraries and consortia worldwide to generate the required$200,000 plus needed each year. Libraries with a legitimate primary interest in and ability tocontribute would need to contribute (subscribe) at $500/year - $3000/year, depending on size, foraccess to the SEP. But SEP would not restrict access to just these institutions. Access would remain
open to all. One can liken this model to the NPR (National Public Radio) approach of some pay, allbenefit. Obviously this model only works if the community as a whole can generate the required$200,000 plus each year and if those libraries that “should” contribute mostly do. If enough libraries
and consortia contribute (at a rate proportional to size/ability to pay), this model might work, althoughwith less stability than Model A.
This revenue-generation plan would be more complex, and involve expenses to keep track of who
has paid and who has not, and require part-time personnel to keep up with contracts and to market
each year the annual contributions. Money could be collected through the non-profit Philosophy
Documentation Center, however, there would still be marketing costs. However, on this model,
authors and editors could legitimately ask for payment for services rendered, given that it is a
traditional income generation plan. If that were to happen, the SEP costs would increase significantly
and so would the subscription rate.
C. Limited Access Underwritten by Yearly Subscriptions – Open Access to a Portion of the SEP
On this model, the active portion of the SEP's content, i.e., its dynamic entries (which are always
changing) might still be freely available to everyone. However, the SEP's archives would become
available only to users at those institutions which pay a yearly subscription fee. Since proper
academic citation and citation-lookup can take place only to fixed, archived versions of the entries,
this program would be attractive to scholars and those librarians who would like to foster good web
citation habits among their students and faculty.
This revenue-generation plan would be more complex than Model A, and involve expenses toconfigure the SEP servers to keep track of who has paid and who has not, and require part-time
personnel to keep up with contracts and to market. Money could be collected through the non-profit
Philosophy Documentation Center, however, there would still be marketing costs.
Model C will not work if the SEP discovers that the archive is not a sufficient draw and that there are
significant numbers of accesses to the free dynamic portion from institutions which have not paid forsubscription to the archives. Then SEP would have to consider having no free access or limiting thenumber of visits to the *dynamic* portion of the Encyclopedia, after which point users wouldn't be able
to reach *any* portion of the SEP. This would involve more administration.
This model disenfranchises those academics and students in poorer institutions/countries fromproperly citing the SEP and, at worst, may preclude archive access entirely, since these
institutions/countries won't even be able to afford the costs of subscription to the archives. This modelhas the most extra costs associated with it -- automating authentication, costs for marketing andmaintaining contracts, and costs charged by the Philosophy Documentation Center for collecting
money.
Under this model it is unclear how the mirror sites would be incorporated. At present, these mirror
sites; (a) speed up service to other parts of the world, (b) provide service when the Stanford server is
SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 200514

down and (c) provide a level of digital preservation. Would they charge for mirroring? There would be
extra IT costs of configuring their servers to respect subscription restrictions, etc.

SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

15

ANNUAL CONTRIBUTION/SUBSCRIPTION GUIDELINES FOR ICOLC FUNDING INITIATIVE FOR STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
Phil
Phil
Phil
Phil
Depts Annual G Asia
Depts Annual G Africa
Depts Annual G North America
Depts
Annual G
EuropeARMENIA
3$600 AZERBAIJAN
1$200 ALGERIA
2$200 CANADA
68$172,000
AUSTRIA12$6,000 BANGLADESH
5$1,000 ANGOLA
1$100 MEXICO
26$5,200
BELARUS2$400 CHINA
39$7,800 BENIN
1$200 UNITED STATES
865 $1,393,000$1,570,200
BELGIUM15$7,500 CYPRUS
1$200 CENT AFR REP
1$100
BOSNIA & HERZ
1$200 INDIA
107 $21,400 CHAD
1$100 Australia
BULGARIA
4$800 INDONESIA
10$2,000 EGYPT
3$300 AUSTRALIA
50$50,000
CROATIA
2$400 IRAN
3$600 ERITREA
1$200 NEW ZEALAND
11$11,000$61,000CZECH REPUBLIC
7$1,400 IRAQ
3$600 ETHIOPIA
2$200
DENMARK9$4,500 ISRAEL
7$3,500 GABON
1$100 Latin America/Carribean
ESTONIA
4$800 JAPAN
52 $10,400 GHANA
2$200 ARGENTINA
21$4,200FINLAND
8$4,000 JORDAN
1$200 GUINEA
2$400 BERMUDA
1$1,000FRANCE
40 $20,000 KAZAKHSTAN
1$200 KENYA
8$800 BOLIVIA
1$200
GEORGIA
2$400 KUWAIT
1$200 LESOTHO
2$200 BRAZIL
36$7,200GERMANY
81 $40,500 LAOS
1$200 LIBERIA
1$100 CHILE
17$3,400GREECE8$4,000 LEBANON
4$800 LIBYA
3$300 COLOMBIA
16$3,200HUNGARY
16$3,200 MALAYSIA
4$800 MADAGASCAR
2$200 COSTA RICA
3$600
ICELAND
2$1,000 MONGOLIA
1$200 MALAWI
1$200 CUBA
1$200
IRELAND
9$9,000 MYANMAR
1$200 MOROCCO
1$100 DOMINICAN REP
1
$200
ITALY
37 $18,500 OMAN
1$200 NAMIBIA
1$100 ECUADOR
4$800
LATVIA
2$400 PAKISTAN
6$1,200 NIGERIA
10$1,000 EL SALVADOR
1$200
LIECHTENSTEIN
1$500 PHILIPPINES
26$5,200 RWANDA
1$100 GUATEMALA
3$600
LITHUANIA
2$400 QATAR
1$200 SOUTH AFRICA
18$1,800 HONDURAS
1$200
LUXEMBOURG
1$500 SINGAPORE
1$200 SUDAN
1$100 JAMAICA
2$400
MACEDONIA
1$200 SOUTH KOREA
40$8,000 TOGO
1$100 NICARAGUA
3
$600
MALTA
1
$500 SRI LANKA
3$600 TUNISIA
1$100 PANAMA
1$200
MOLDOVA
1$200 SYRIA
1$200 UGANDA
1$100 PERU
6$1,200NETHERLANDS
13$6,500 TAIWAN
9$1,800 ZAMBIA
1$100 URUGUAY
5$1,000NORWAY8$4,000 THAILAND
11$2,200 ZIMBABWE
2$200 VENEZUELA
4$800$7,700$26,200
POLAND25$5,000 TURKEY
13$2,600PORTUGAL
7$3,500 UNITED ARAB EMIR
1$200
ROMANIA
16$3,200 VIET NAM
2$400
RUSSIA29$5,800 YEMEN
2$400$73,900SLOVAKIA
4$800
SLOVENIA
2
$400
SPAIN
38 $19,000
SWEDEN7$3,500SWITZERLAND
13$6,500UKRAINE
4$800
UNITED KINGDOM
108 $108,000
VATICAN C STATE
2$1,000YUGOSLAVIA
3$600$294,500

SEP ICOLC Call to Action January 2005

16