The Problems With a Traditional Funding Model

The SEP project has reasons for continuing as a self-publishingacademic project and for avoiding a long-term funding solution,possibly in alliance with an publisher, that is based on ongoingannual subscriptions that lock out non-subscribers. We note first thatthe only thing an alliance with a publisher would bring to the SEPproject would be expertise on how to market and collect money; we havealready developed the expertise needed to publish a dynamic referencework on the web.

Our reasons for avoiding a subscription-based funding model (oralliance with a publisher) are based on the severe problems that wouldoccur if such a plan were implemented:

• our costs would increase
• our impact would be reduced
• our future would be compromised

We consider each of these problems in turn.

Our costs would increase

Our best estimate is that an alliance with a commercial oracademic publisher would at least double, if not triple, ourcosts, given the following new expenses which we would incur:

1. We would have to start paying our authors and subject editors,since reference works published by commercial and academic pressesstandardly make such payments. Our authors and editors no doubtdeserve payment for their efforts, but our working hypothesis has beenthat as long as the SEP remains free and highly visible, they will seetheir volunteer labor as being personally rewarding as well as acontribution to the public good.
2. We would have to start paying our mirror sites. These sitesprovide faster world-wide access, offer extra layers of digitalpreservation, and offer uninterrupted 24/7 service on those rareoccasions the Stanford server is down for maintenance.
3. We would incur marketing, distribution, and income collectioncosts, and the costs of the extra personnel and managers needed toimplement those processes.
4. We would incur costs required to support the customer servicedemands of libraries paying annual subscriptions.
5. An alliance with a publisher might force the project to moveoff-campus, and as a result, we would incur extra costs above andbeyond the 6.5% overhead associated with running the project atStanford, such as more expensive office space, backup systems (whichCSLI now covers), repair (which the Stanford Bookstore does morecheaply than on the outside), and local IT/networking support (whichis now provided at CSLI).

Our impact would be reduced

• Restricting access to subscribers only would obviouslydisenfranchise many deserving scholarly groups including students andfaculty at smaller universities or colleges, independent scholarsusing an internet service provider at home, students and teachers atK-12 institutions, scholars and students in many parts of the world,indeed anyone at institutions too poor to pay the institutionalsubscription and any individuals too poor to pay personalsubscriptions. Clearly, the SEP would cease to achieve its goal ofbringing the best in philosophical scholarship to the wider public.
• The fact that search engines would be blocked fromaccessing SEP pages would mean that the SEP would disappear from theresults returned by those search engines, dropping it to a level ofinvisibility comparable to the commercially-published RoutledgeEncyclopedia of Philosophy and further curtailing the ability ofreaders to find the SEP. 75% of the SEP's readership findsit by way of a web search.
• Even if there were some way of allowing search engines toindex its restricted-access site, the effect of blockingnon-subscribers from the SEP would result in a precipitous drop in thenumber of links to the SEP pages, and a corresponding drop insearch-engine rankings. Google rankings arebased upon the number of links from other websites, so the SEP's highrank is a function of the number of links that point to the SEP.Google may not remain the premier search engine, but the techniques ituses to identify relevant pages to a search will surely beincorporated and enhanced by any successors.

Our future would be compromised

In addition to these consequences, there is the question as towhether this model can sustain itself. The overriding fact whichconfronts any attempt to fund the SEP with annual subscriptions (orindeed any other reference work in the humanities) is this: thecommercial market (i.e., those with the ability to paysignificantongoing and increasing subscription costs) forphilosophy (humanities) reference works is very small. To complicatematters in the case of the SEP, there is already one commercial onlinereference work in philosophy (Routledge) with a presence in thatmarket.

In view of the small market, the subscription model wouldtherefore have to resort to other income-producing mechanisms, such asadvertisements and selling sponsored links in the entries. Of course,these other mechanisms will require personnel to market to advertisersand to develop contracts with sponsors. So there are costs involvedhere as well. Moreover, such income-producing mechanisms maycompromise the academic appearance and integrity of the encyclopedia.Readers might start to wonder whether a book was listed in an entrybecause the author of the entry found it valuable or because someonepaid the SEP to include it.

Conclusion

The above results all combine in pernicious ways, with the resultbeing that a subscription-based funding model would lead the SEPproject towards a situation where it loses it focus and character as aproject developed, administered and maintained by academics. Not onlywould the SEP reach a tiny fraction of the audience it once reached,but it might be forced to scramble each year to make ends meet,distracting its central staff from the academic mission of enhancingthe encyclopedia's content and technological underpinnings. Bycontrast, if its basic operations and growth were covered by anendowment, the SEP staff could focus their fund-raising efforts oninnovative grant proposals (taking advantage of their location at theCenter for the Study of Language and Information) to push thetechnological limits of humanities computing, providing benefits toscholars and other readers in the form of improved navigationinterfaces which are sensitive both to meanings and to the conceptualstructure of the entire encyclopedia.

Thus, the SEP will best accomplish its mission only if it offerscompletely open access to its content and retains its character as aself-publishing academic project run by people with the requiredtechnological skills.

John Perry, Faculty Sponsor
Edward N. Zalta, Principal Editor
Uri Nodelman, Senior Editor
Colin Allen, Associate Editor

Center for the Study of Language and Information
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
U.S.A.