Peter Suber

From Peter Suber
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This is an experiment in a wiki-based home page. For now, it's my main home page. If I decide that the experiment is a failure, and shift to another page, I'll say so here and link to the new page.

General

  • My primary field is philosophy (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1978). I'm also a non-practicing lawyer (J.D., Northwestern, 1982).

Other current affiliations

Writings

  • My latest book is Open Access (MIT Press, 2012). It's available in paperback and at least eight OA editions (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Daisy, DjVu, plain text, and streaming). I keep it alive with frequent updates and supplements. Choice named Open Access an Outstanding Academic Title for 2013.
  • On open access (OA), see:
    • the bibliography of my writings on open access (with links to OA editions)
    • the backfile of my newsletter (Free Online Scholarship Newsletter, March 2001 - September 2002, and SPARC Open Access Newsletter, July 2003 - June 2013)
    • the archive of my old blog, Open Access News (May 2002 - April 2010)
  • On topics other than open access, see:
    • the bibliography of my writings (with links to OA editions).
  • Nearly all my publications are open access from my section of DASH (the Harvard open-access repository), my Earlham web site, a publisher's site, or some combination of these.
    • One kind of exception is an older, print-only publication for which I don't yet have a digital edition. Over the years I've gradually created digital editions where I didn't have them, and I'm nearly done.
    • Another kind of exception is a work for which I have a digital edition but not permission for open access. The only exception of this kind is The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions (Routledge, 1998). I published it before I started thinking hard about OA. I've since asked Routledge to make the book OA, but it declined. I'm still willing to do so as soon as Routledge is. If Routledge doesn't make it OA while the book is still in print, then I'll make it OA as soon is it goes out of print and the rights revert to me.
    • I believe these are the only exceptions. All my publications since I started working for OA in the late 1990's are OA, and except for Speluncean Explorers, all my publications for which I have digital copies are now OA.

Background and past affiliations

  • Until May 2003 I was a professor of philosophy at Earlham College, where I had taught since 1982. I also taught computer science and law. Although I have left full-time teaching, I am still a research professor at Earlham and still work full-time in the academic universe. My philosophical interests lie chiefly in the history of modern European philosophy, roughly from Montaigne to Nietzsche; Kant and Hegel; the history of western skepticism from Sextus Empiricus to the 20th century; epistemological and ethical issues related to skepticism, such as fictionalism, ideology, self-deception, and the ethics of belief; the logical, epistemological, ethical, and legal problems of self-reference; the metatheory of first-order logic; the ethics of liberty, paternalism, consent, and coercion; criminal law and tort law; and the philosophy of law. My current interests center on policies and technologies that foster research. Apart from the active promotion these policies and technologies, I want to understand how the internet has changed research and scholarly communication, how it ought to change them, and what it would mean to take full advantage of the internet for the creation and sharing of knowledge.

Related pages

  • My entire Earlham web site, including my courses, blog archive, and many of my publications, is preserved and annually refreshed at a section within Harvard's H-Sites. H-Sites will soon preserve and mirror the wiki of the Harvard Open Access Project and my personal wiki containing this home page.

Contacting me

  • My primary email addresses are peter_suber@harvard.edu and peter.suber@gmail.com.
    • I also use <psuber@cyber.law.harvard.edu>.
    • I no longer use <peters@earlham.edu> or <psuber@law.harvard.edu>. If you have them in your address book, please replace them with one of the above.
  • Email is the best way to reach me. If you want to contact me by phone, fax, snail mail, or some other way, and don't want to go through the Office for Scholarly Communication, then send me an email and I'll tell you how. If you tweet me a message, I probably won't see it.


"To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

     Pascal, Pensées.
     Trans. A.J. Krailsheimer, Penguin, 1966, §513

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