Who edits and maintains the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is edited by two Co-Principal Editors, Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, working with an Editorial Board and a global network of scholars in philosophy and related disciplines. The SEP is hosted by Stanford University's Metaphysics Research Lab in the Department of Philosophy, and its operations are supported by Stanford offices, academic library contributions, and individual donors. If you want to judge the SEP's authority for citation or research, the relevant pages to check are the Masthead, Editorial Board, and "About the SEP" sections on the site itself.
Who runs the SEP
The SEP's editorial leadership is stated directly on its site:
- Co-Principal Editors: Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman
- Editorial Board: listed separately from the Masthead
- Contributing scholars: the SEP describes its mission as organizing "scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work"
This structure matters because it means entries are not written by a single in-house staff. Each entry is authored by an expert and then handled through an editorial process before publication.
How entries are maintained
The SEP is designed as a living reference work rather than a fixed print edition. Its site navigation includes:
- Table of Contents — the full list of published entries
- What's New — recently added or revised content
- Chronological Archives — entries organized by publication or revision date
- Random Entry — a way to browse without a specific target
The presence of "What's New" and archives indicates that entries are added and updated over time, which is a key reason the SEP is treated as a current reference rather than a static one.
Who funds and supports it
The SEP lists several sources of support, which is useful context when assessing its institutional backing:
| Support source | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Stanford University offices (Provost, Dean of Humanities and Sciences, Dean of Research) | Current operations |
| SEP Library Fund | Contributions from the National Endowment for the Humanities and academic library membership dues via SEPIA |
| O.C. Tanner SEP Fund | Gift from the O.C. Tanner Company |
| John Perry Fund and The SEP Fund | Individual donors |
| Friends of the SEP Society Fund | Membership dues; members receive benefits such as formatted PDF versions of entries |
The SEP also acknowledges founding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the American Philosophical Association/Pacific Division, the Canadian Philosophical Association, and the Philosophy Documentation Center, with fundraising supported by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
How to verify editorial information yourself
If you need to confirm who edits or maintains a specific entry, or check the SEP's governance:
- Go to the SEP site and open the About section.
- Select Editorial Information for the editorial structure, or Masthead for the list of editors.
- Select Editorial Board for the board membership.
- For citation purposes, use the How to Cite the SEP page rather than reconstructing a citation from an entry page.
The SEP also provides Advanced Tools, Special Characters, Accessibility, and Mirror Sites pages, and notes that the site is copyright © 2026 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University (ISSN 1095-5054).
What this means for using the SEP
Because the SEP names its editors, lists its board, documents its funding, and maintains dated archives, you can trace both the people responsible and the institutional support behind it. That transparency is what allows readers to evaluate it as a scholarly reference. If your question is specifically about how to cite an entry or how to search the archive, those are separate tasks covered by the SEP's own citation and search guidance.