[koglist] Fwd: PhilPapers seeking financial support through institutional subscriptions

From: David Chalmers <chalmers(a)philpapers.org> Subject: PhilPapers seeking financial support through institutional subscriptions Date: April 14, 2014 9:05:11 PM GMT+02:00 To: kampis.george(a)gmail.com Dear George, We are writing to let you know that PhilPapers is moving to a subscription model whereby institutions pay to subscribe to PhilPapers. We are also requesting your support in asking your institution to subscribe. PhilPapers will remain a noncommercial enterprise administered by the nonprofit PhilPapers Foundation as a service to the philosophical community. In five years, PhilPapers has grown into a major service central to many of the activities of the profession. Thanks to the hundreds of editors and thousands of volunteers that contribute to PhilPapers, our index has grown to over 1,000,000 items organized in nearly 5,000 bibliographies. A pet project has turned into the best and most widely used bibliographical resource in the field. Many changes have taken place at PhilPapers. Chief among these changes, David Bourget, the architect of PhilPapers, now has a tenure-track appointment with teaching, research, and service duties in addition to PhilPapers. We need technical staff that can assume many of David's roles, from server maintenance and administrative support to application programming and user interface design. A whole team is needed for PhilPapers to thrive and develop to its full potential. It is important to make the transition to a team-supported project to ensure PhilPapers' sustainability in the long run. Sustaining PhilPapers will require significant financial support. We have considered many different models, including asking for donations and requiring subscriptions. After much consultation, it has become clear to us that the best way forward is a model involving annual subscriptions for large institutions. Starting June 1, 2014, we ask large institutions (especially universities) to pay an annual subscription fee for their users to have full access to PhilPapers. Full details about the subscription model, including institutional criteria and fees, can be found on this page. Users accessing PhilPapers from computers at non-subscribing institutions will have their access limited in various ways. In the initial stages, these limitations will take the form of banners and data throttling, so that users at these institutions can still use PhilPapers, albeit under non-ideal conditions. In the longer term, stronger access limitations may be imposed. Individuals using PhilPapers from non-institutional locations (e.g. from home) will continue to have free access to PhilPapers, as will PhilPapers editors who are signed in using their account. The PhilPapers Open Access Archive, PhilJobs, and PhilEvents will remain open access. We believe that this model provides the right balance of open access and financial support. One reason why the subscription model is appropriate is that PhilPapers replaces indexes sold by commercial vendors that require subscriptions. We believe that PhilPapers is the best bibliographic service available in philosophy. It is more complete and more usable than the alternatives, and even on the subscription model it remains much cheaper. If you think that PhilPapers is worth supporting, please consider suggesting that your library purchase a subscription to PhilPapers. You can find details on how to contact your university librarian here. Your support is important in ensuring a viable future for PhilPapers. See this page for more information on subscriptions: http://philpapers.org/subscriptions/ David Bourget and David Chalmers Co-Directors, PhilPapers This message was sent to you because you subscribed to the PhilPapers News forum. Click here to unsubscribe from these notices.