The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia, dealing with

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

, philosophical topics, and philosophers. The IEP combines open access publication with peer reviewed publication of original papers. Contribution is generally by invitation, and contributors are recognized and leading international specialists within their field.

History

The ''IEP'' was founded by philosopher

James Fieser James Fieser is professor of philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He received his B.A. from Berea College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Purdue University. He is founder and general editor of the Internet Encyclopedia ...

in 1995, operating through a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

organization with the aim of providing accessible and scholarly information on philosophy.Kooy, B. 2015. 'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy', in ''Reference Review,'' Vol.29, No.4, p.12; see also The current general editors are philosophers James Fieser and

Bradley Dowden Bradley Harris Dowden (born 1942) is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the California State University, Sacramento. Work He is a general editor of the ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. Dowden received his MS in ph ...

, with the staff also including numerous area editors as well as volunteers. The entire website was redesigned in the summer of 2009, moving from static HTML pages to the open-source publishing platform ''

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architectu ...

''.

Organization

The intended audience for the ''IEP'' is philosophy students and faculty who are not specialists within the field, and thus articles are written in an accessible style. Articles consist of a brief survey or overview, followed by the body of the article, and an annotated bibliography.Kooy, B. 2015. 'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy', in ''Reference Review,'' Vol.29, No.4, p. 12. Articles are searchable either by an alphabetical index or through a Google-power search mechanism.

Usage

Similarweb SimilarWeb Ltd. is an Israeli web analytics company specializing in web traffic and performance. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, the company has 12 offices worldwide. Similarweb went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2021. History The c ...

analytics suggest that the ''IEP'' website is accessed worldwide between two and three million times per month.Similarweb data on IEP, at www.similarweb.com, accessed 18 September 2017. Some 75% of this usage is through internet searches, 18% is through direct access, and 5% through referral, with the referring websites including other reference websites and university library guides.

Recognition

The ''IEP'' is included by the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...

in its listing of Best Free Reference Sites; listed as an online philosophy resource by the Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations; listed by EpistemeLinks as one of the "outstanding resources" in philosophy on the internet; and listed as a reliable resource in many university philosophy guides.

References

External links