Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (hereafter SEP) is a free online encyclopedia of philosophy run and maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide. Apart from its online status, the encyclopaedia maintains the traditional academic approach, used in most encyclopaedias and academic journals, achieving quality by means of:
- the use of specialist authors
- selected by an editor or an editorial committee which is competent (though not necessarily a specialist) in the field covered by the encyclopedia
- the use of peer review.
The SEP was created in 1995 by Edward N. Zalta, with the explicit aim of providing a dynamic encyclopdia which was updated regularly, and so did not become dated in the manner of print encyclopedias. The charter for the encylcopedia allows for rival articles on a single topic to allow irreconcilable conflicts amongst scholars to be reflected in a scholarly manner. By several measures, such as by citation rankings, the SEP is easily the most successful and prestigious internet resource on philosophy.
External links
- Homepage of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/);
- A Solution to the Problem of Updating Encyclopedias (http://plato.stanford.edu/solution/) - an article by Hammer and Zalta outlining the scholarly problem the SEP was created to address.