Introduction to PhilPapers
PhilPapers is a comprehensive directory of online academic philosophy.To sample the large number of functions associated with PhilPapers,we suggest you try the following:
- 1. Set up a user account. User accounts are not compulsory, andyou can browse PhilPapers listings without one. Butcreating an account enablesmany useful functions, including personal reading lists andbibliographies, participation in the discussion forums, submission andediting of items, and much else. Every user has a profile page, whichcontains lists of the user's works and their areas of interest, amongother things, and which can be made public or private as the userchooses.
- 2. Browse recent work. Via the "New items" menu above, you canbrowse thelatest articles from philosophy journals, from personalwebsites, from online archives, and from user submissions to thePhilPapers database.
- 3. Browse older journals. In ourjournal archive, youcan browse all online issues of more than over 1000 philosophy journalsin philosophy.If you belong to a university with access to commercial journals butare currently off-campus, you can set up automatic proxy browsing forthese journals via a box in the right column of most pages.
- 4. Browse by area.Philpapers aims to categorize every item intoup to three areas of philosophy, according to a fine-grainedtaxonomy.The "Browse by area" menu takes you to pages for about 40 broad areas of philosophy, falling under five major clusters. From here youcan select more fine-grained topics and subtopics. Thecategorization project is in its early stages, so many items are asyet uncategorized, but you can contribute by categorizing some itemsyourself, as discussed below.
- 5. Search for items.You can search for items containing a givenkeyword via the search box at the top of each page. Via theadvancedsearch page, you can set up much more complex searches. Advanced searches can be saved for later use, can be used to build bibliographies (see below), and can be monitored for new material.
- 6. Filter displayed items. In most pages of listings,you can filter what is displayed using boxes in the right column. Forexample, you can choose published work only, or freely available workonly. You can also set up your own list of preferred journals anddisplay only items from those journals.
- 7. Submit items. You cansubmit items (papers or books) to thePhilPapers database using the "Submit" menu. You can submit a link toan item hosted elsewhere, you can submit information about a publisheditem, and/or (if you have the right to do so) you can submit a filecontaining the item itself. Note that PhilPapers is largely dedicatedto professional-quality work in academic philosophy, and we reservethe right to reject any submissions.
- 8. Edit items. If you see mistakes in any PhilPapers entry(whether regarding author, title, publication information, orsomething else), please correct it by clicking "Edit". Mostinformation in PhilPapers is gathered by the automatic harvestingof websites, and some errors are to be expected. We particularlyencourage authors to ensure that entries for their own works arecorrect. All edits will be monitored by PhilPapers editors.
- 9. Categorize items. As discussed above, we aim to classify eachitem in PhilPapers in up to three areas of philosophy. Users can helpwith this process, either by clicking "categorize" under a paper toselect fine-grained categories, or by using the categorization toolson the browse-by-area pages. For much more information, see theCategorization Project page.
- 10. Discuss philosophy. By clicking the "Discuss" button under anypaper, you can discuss that paper in ourdiscussion forums. Everyitem can in principle be the subject of its own forum, typicallyassociated with larger forums devoted to various areas of philosophy.There are also forums for various other topics, including discussionof PhilPapers itself, all available at the forums page. These forumsare primarily intended for discussion by professional philosophers andgraduate students.
- 11. Set up bibliographies. In addition to using the publiccategories, you can set up any number ofpersonal bibliographies intowhich entries can be filed, by clicking on "File Under" under a givenitem. You can make these bibliographiesavailable publically if you choose. In addition, clicking "to read"under a given entry will add that entry toyour personal reading list.
- 12. Set up content alerts. You can set up RSS feeds or e-mail alerts fornew items satisfying any criteria you choose. To set up such a feed, simply goto a page where those criteria are operative (by using search boxesand/or the filter boxes on the right-hand side of the page), and clickon the relevant link in the "monitor this page" box at the bottom right.
For further information about PhilPapers, see:
