Many encyclopedias,
not one filter

Academic institutions publish their own reference works — same topics, different methods, visible disagreement

What is wrong with a single filter

Wikipedia is useful and free. The problem is structural: for most topics, the world has one default article, maintained under one “neutral” process. Minority or early-stage views often lose not because they were refuted, but because they did not win a consensus fight. Ideas that later became standard science — continental drift, germ theory, the Big Bang — looked fringe in their time. A single live page is a poor place for that kind of minority case to develop in public.

What we propose instead

Each participating academic institution — universities, research institutes, scholarly academies — runs its own encyclopedia, with its own editorial judgment. Readers can open the same topic at Oxford, Chicago, LSE, Leiden, or another house and see how the accounts differ. We do not promise a single “true” page. We make disagreement legible.

Different methods

The same subject can be framed through different scholarly traditions — for example, LSE and Chicago on markets, or analytic and continental departments on philosophy. Those differences are features, not errors to merge away.

Institutional strengths

An institution can go deep where it is actually strong, rather than watering every entry down to a global average. Strength shows up as depth and continuity, not as a slogan.

Independent editorial control

Shared infrastructure is fine. Shared forced consensus is not. Each institution keeps its own voice and standards.

Research into the reference layer

Scholars and students can write and revise entries as part of real academic work, so current research can enter the reference layer without waiting for a global compromise.

Next

Background, model, and how to get involved.

Why a single encyclopedia is not enough

Why Change?

Questions or updates

Contact