Support the SEP

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) needs your support. Over 1500 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 about 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. Though SEP entries are freely available in HTML, you can pay modest membership dues to join the Friends of the SEP Society and become entitled to download high quality PDF (Portable Document Format) versions of SEP entries.
• Make a Donation. Please consider supporting the SEP by making a generous tax-deductible contribution.
• 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.

We encourage professional scholars, general readers, and librarians to read the following open letters and start a constructive dialogue about supporting the SEP.

• An Open Letter to Professional Scholars
• An Open Letter to General Readers
• An Open Letter to Librarians

YouTube Video Highlighting the SEP

• Stanford News Service Interview with John Perry and Edward N. Zalta

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
  • American Philosophical Association
  • Canadian Philosophical Association
  • Australasian Association of Philosophy
  • European Association of Analytic Philosophy