PEP stands for Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. It produces the PEP Archive version 6 (1886-2003), which spans a period of 120 years, on CD and PEP WEB. It contains the full text of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud and the full text of 18 premier journals in psychoanalysis. There are over 50,000 articles, 70 million words, and 4,000 figures and illustrations that originally resided in more than 400 volumes. All content is hyperlinked and integrated with a state of the art search engine.
PEP represents collaboration by the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, the parent organizations that in 1996 jump-started PEP with a $300,000 loan. This loan was paid off by 2000. PEP, a non-profit corporation, began paying grants in 2001 to each of the parent organizations, amounting to $230,000 plus over $475,000 paid in royalties to the journals.
The original six directors were Paul Mosher, Judy Schachter, and I from APsaA and Peter Fonagy, Martin Miller, and David Tuckett from London. Later, Alice Brand Bartlett replaced Schachter. Early on, each director contributed directly to the daily operations of PEP. Neil Shapiro of SciLab has been our technical consultant and developer from inception. In 2002, PEP changed its structure to having two managing directors, Tuckett and me. Several years ago, two PEP trustees, Jonah Schein and Steve Firestein, were appointed to represent the fiduciary interests of the Executive Council.
The year 2006 has been a banner year for PEP. In May 2006, in time to celebrate Freud's 150th birthday, PEP launched its second generation Web interface, called PEP PsychoanalyticLiteratureSearch (found at pep-web.org). PEP PsychoanalyticLiterature Search is the full text search successor to JourLit, which was pioneered by Mosher. The free search examines the full text of work in the archive and material in the recent content of psychoanalytic journals not yet in PEP, because the archive must operate with a three-year moving wall. Anyone with access to the Web can now search for free the entire content of the PEP Archive and current content for most of the journals. This innovation is popular with scholars who can now explore a topic with a single search. It also brings knowledge on what psychoanalysts are writing about and trying to understand much more widely into the public sphere.
Moreover, the new PEP-WEB is integrated with Google (specifically Google Scholar) so that the full text of the PEP Archive is now regularly “crawled”—exposing psychoanalysis much more widely to public attention. Access to the full text continues to require PEP authentication and therefore a PEP subscription. Google Scholar has a method of doing citation counts which should ensure that searches on psychoanalytically related words result in links to work by psychoanalysts—another major outreach benefit. Other features of the new interface include open URL linking and systems to integrate PEP archive material into university library catalogues.
We celebrated Freud's 150th birthday through the addition of the Standard Edition on PEP A1v6. Obtaining the rights to the Standard Edition required years of discussion. The Association owes a great deal of gratitude to Tuckett and Fonagy who led the copyright negotiations and to the Board of the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London as well as to Sigmund Freud Copyrights and the daughters of Angela Harris. Putting the Freud SE into PEP in a way that would maximize the value of an electronic addition was a considerable technical challenge, which involved underlying changes to the structure of the entire PEP database. The SE is an edited collection of a translation of mostly published articles. The main gain from electronic publication would be the new capability to perform full-text searches and to hyperlink. To present the results of searches and links in the best possible fashion, each authored item in the Standard Edition has been treated as a separate article. We believe the results of this procedure are quite elegant.
In December to celebrate the achievement of the addition of the SE, a most successful Freud Scholars Conference was hosted by the British Society and attended by many, including the PEP Scholar's Committee, an international group, chaired by Robert Michels and originally organized by Fonagy. Three main proposals have now emerged for the PEP board to consider—including a set of requirements for a Mach 3 PEP-WEB interface, which offer ways to enhance the PEP Archive content with superior tools for scholarship and research.
Although the Archive has subscriptions from major universities like Stanford, Yale, and Princeton, PEP will require a different business model fully to exploit the opportunities to market the PEP-WEB Archive to universities worldwide. Discussion is ongoing with several major third party e-publishing commercial providers (aggregators) who are interested in marketing the PEP Archive.
In 2003, at the urging of some institutes, PEP began selected trials of low cost whole-institute subscriptions to the Archive. The experiment has been successful. The number of professional groups participating worldwide has reached over 35 institutes and well over 4,000 subscribers. You can visit the PEP Web site at for additional information.
Sales in 2006 topped $1 million, eclipsing 2005, which had been the best year to date. The record seems to mark the success of the historic first electronic and online publication of the Freud Standard Edition, as well as the rapid growth of Web sales to universities (up 28 percent) and to professional groups (up 100 percent). Expenditures have been on target.
Nadine Levinson, D.D.S., is PEP co-managing director and president. She also serves as treasurer of the IPA and assistant director of education at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.
Our efficient staff, Stephanie Short and Athena Tsiokris, have worked hard to provide excellent global customer service. The PEP board expects to make a significant and record donation to the British Institute and the Association.
PEP spent the last three years preoccupied with developing the new content and new systems. PEP has digitized and is ready to include in later updates Free Associations, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science, the Journal of Analytical Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, and Psychoanalytic Review, 20 more books, and several possible new journals. These activities have transformed PEP and its revenues so that the future now needs careful consideration, prior to the construction and endorsement of future business plans. A new strategy and business plan for 2007-2010 will be evolving over the next few months focusing on further expansion in order to obtain our goals of psychoanalytic outreach, research, teaching, and scholarship.