Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2011

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a peer-reviewed, open-access online reference, draws the majority of its funding from investment returns from a project endowment, built from the financial contributions of academic libraries. When we first studied the project, it had made great progress toward its goal of building a $4.125-million endowment, but it faced uncertainty over the extent to which the economic downturn in 2008 would affect its investments. In the two years since then, as endowment support has not yet reached needed levels, SEP's leaders have developed a new channel of support for the resource by designing and launching a 'Friends of the SEP' membership programme for individuals, who gain access to PDF versions of SEP entries and versions formatted for mobile devices. Founded by Stanford University researchers John Perry and Edward Zalta in 1995, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is an online, open-access reference source that consists of more than 1,200 original, signed entries, ranging from 'abstract objects' to 'zombies'. 1 The entries are written, edited, and reviewed by philosophy scholars who