''Sino-Platonic Papers'' is a scholarly

monographic series Monographic series (alternatively, monographs in series) are scholarly and scientific books released in successive volumes, each of which is structured like a separate book or scholarly monograph. Semantics In general books that are released se ...

published by the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. The chief focus of the series is on the intercultural relations of China and

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

with other peoples. The journal was established in 1986 by

Victor H. Mair Victor Henry Mair (; born March 25, 1943) is an American sinologist. He is a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. Among other accomplishments, Mair has edited the standard '' Columbia History of Chinese Literature'' and the ''C ...

, to publish and encourage "unconventional or controversial" research by "younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors". Issues 1 (November 1986) through 170 (February 2006) were published in traditional printed format, but beginning with issue 171 (June 2006), ''Sino-Platonic Papers'' has been published electronically only. All new issues, and old ones that are no longer in print, are provided free in

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

format, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. The

Warring States The Warring States period () was an era in ancient Chinese history characterized by warfare, as well as bureaucratic and military reforms and consolidation. It followed the Spring and Autumn period and concluded with the Qin wars of conquest ...

Project, at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

, called changing this journal's publication format to

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

"an explicit challenge to the gatekeepers whose chief role is to keep the lid on."Sinological Journals: Sino-Platonic Papers
, Warring States Project, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

References

External links

* Chinese studies journals Creative Commons Attribution-licensed journals Publications established in 1986 Multilingual journals Monographic series Open access journals {{area-journal-stub