Dedicated to the free distribution of scholarly essays, the current Version 0.2 of HyperNietzsche is being launched at a delicate moment for academic publishing. After the call for a Public Library of Science that did not give the desired results, scientists are trying again, with the Budapest Open Access Initiative, to find a way to surmount the obstacles that restrain access to scientific literature in order to “accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.”

Why have we come to this point? In numerous lectures and in a famous article available on line, In Oldenburg’s Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing, Jean-Claude Guédon has provided a clear and convincing account of the dynamic and the causes of the crisis in which academic publishing finds itself. In our opinion, anyone who wants to find solutions to these problems should begin by reflecting on these pages, in which Jean-Claude Guédon urges us to “create a navigable, worldwide ocean of knowledge, open to all,” and to develop a “distributed intelligence civilization - a civilization open to all that are good enough (excellence), and not only to those who can afford it (elites) .”

In the humanities, the problems differ from those in the natural sciences. Here it is not so much the price of journals or monographs that causes concern (even if in certain cases the prices are indeed quite high), but rather the insufficient distribution, the delays in publication, and more and more, the impossibility – pure and simple – of publishing certain types of research. In both cases, however, it is difficult to imagine any solution other than the development of new models of publication via the Internet. This can proceed only on the condition that one is able to create a legal and institutional framework that confers on Internet publications the same prestige and the same intellectual and legal recognition that is enjoyed by publications on paper, so that, for example, such electronic publications would play a significant role in the career advancement of young researchers.

HyperNietzsche has endeavored to create such a framework by bringing together twelve of the leading international Nietzsche specialists to form its editorial board; by developing a system of Peer Review via the Internet; and by setting up legal guidelines that protect the rights of the authors while also permitting the free circulation of texts. With the addition of the print-on-demand option, which will be availabe soon, the entire system will be complete.

In this manner, hoping that the case of Nietzsche will be only the beginning of a new and more open approach to research, HyperNietzsche allies itself with the spirit of the quest for shared knowledge launched in Budapest, and makes available to researchers in the humanities a model for the evaluation and distribution of knowledge via the Internet.

In addition to the six essays by Mazzino Montinari that were available in Version 0.1, this new version already contains some twenty contributions: both good old articles that are hard to find, and new texts written for the occasion. But above all, it awaits your work, dear colleagues and friends. Know that from a legal point of view, you have the right to send us all the articles that you have already published on paper, in order to give them a second life on the Internet, and vice-versa, that if you send us an unpublished essay, you will retain the right to publish it elsewhere subsequently if you wish. HyperNietzsche loves dissemination and sharing, not exclusivity.

Navigators, explorers, philosophers : embark !

Paolo D’Iorio