Help / Frequently Asked Questions

There are two ways to find publications in the archive.

In many cases CEPA also provides full text versions (eprints) of publications. Publications with eprints available are highlighted by the "Read Now" icon in the right margin. Click on it to read or print the publication on your computer, tablet or smartphone.

If you select "Print" from your browser's menu or use the key combination "Ctrl+P" (under Windows) or "Apple+P" (on Macs) you can print the full text version

Some documents are not available for "Read Now". You can still read the full text version of such documents by following the "Fulltext at" link at the end of the bibliographical data of the respective documents.

On CEPA.INFO you can easily share your thoughts and comments about a publication. Simply leave a (public) annotation on the abstract page of the publication. Alternatively, you can use CEPA also as your private research tool and annotate publications such that only you can read them. This can be helpful when writing a publication yourself in which you refer to other publications.

To leave an annotation you need to be logged in. Go to the publication you want to (publically or privately) comment on, and click on its title. On the next screen you will see the heading "Annotations" and the button "Add annotation" underneath. This opens a text area where you can write your comment. Select the right "scope" and click on "Add Annotation".

CEPA.INFO makes it possible to collect, manage and edit quotes ("snippets") from full texts and export them as Word/RTF documents.

When reading a full text hover with the mouse over the text fragment in question. The entire paragraph will be highlighted and in the bottom right corner a button, "Save Selection", appears. If you click on the button the entire text of the highlighted paragraph will be added to your collection of snippets. However, if you select only a part of the text before your press the “Save Selection” button only the selected text will be added.

To view all the snippets you have collected so far return to "All My Snippets" page by selecting it from the menu MY.CEPA > My Snippets. You can easily search the collection by entering a search text next to the button “Filter” and press the button.

To export all currently visible snippets press "Export All" and they will be saved as an RTF document on your local hard disk

In CEPA you can easily bundle several publications in a reading list. For example, you can create a list with publications relevant for a certain topic such that others can discover these publications. Or you can define a private list when writing a publication yourself such that you can easily access their bibliographical data and full texts.

Make sure that you are logged in. In the menu, click on LISTS. This takes you to the screen where you can create new reading lists and edit existing ones.
To add a publication to one of your lists go to the abstract of the publication and click on the "+" button under the heading "Reading Lists". This opens a dropdown menu from which you can select the reading list you want the publication to be added to. To remove the publication form a list click on the "x" right to its name.

The number of scholarly publications is continously growing and the archive should reflect this. The team of editors alone cannot keep track of new publications nor of making all important older publications available again. Therefore, CEPA needs the help of authors who add their own publications. In addition, we also appreciate the help of “curators” who submit the bibliographic details and upload full text versions of (important) papers of other authors in CEF formatting (see entries What Is a Curator? and What Is CEF? in this FAQ).

Once you are logged in you can suggest new entries via ADD.
Note that CEPA entries are primarily peer-reviewed publications, i.e., journal articles, book chapters, and books, but CEPA also accepts theses and reports. It is not possible to add an edited volume, i.e., a collection of publications. Rather, add each of these publications separately.

CEPA is not just another listing of bibliographic details but offers fulltext versions of its entries. So, it is paramount that in the case of journal articles and book chapters you upload the respective entire publication or, alternatively, enter the URL from which the entire publication can be downloaded free of charge. Naturally, we welcome also full versions of entire books but understand that this is not always possible.

If you are logged in, you can easily spot all those entries that are not yet linked with a fulltext document: Instead of the "Read Now" icon you will see the grey "Upload" icon in the right margin. (Also there is no "Fulltext at https://cepa.info/…" information.)

Click on that Upload icon.

On the next screen press the "Choose/Browse" button to locate the document on your local harddrive (on some web browsers you can also simply drag and drop the document on this button) and the document will be uploaded to CEPA. (It won't be visible though until we will have checked the uploaded document.)

Make sure that:

Alternatively or in addition, you can also provide the URL of a page where the full text can be downloaded for free.

If you discover a duplicate publication record, or if you think that a publication has little or nothing to do with costructivist aprpoaches, or if you think that including the publication record violates the copyright, you can request deleting this record.

When you are on the publication's abstract page click on "Please provide us with your feedback/evaluation/suggestions" (at the bottom right of the page). This will take you to the page "Send Us Your Feedback/Evaluation/Suggestions". (Note that you have to be logged in for this). There, choose "Request Delete Publication" as the Subject and enter in "Feedback" the reason for your request (e.g., because you discovered a duplicate). Don't forget to answer the security question in the last row (a simple calculation showing us that you are not a robot) and press "Send Feedback" to forward your request to the editors of the archive who will carry out the ultimate deleting. This may take up to a few days.

We encourage users to upload not only their own publications but also the publications of others, in particular classicial important papers. (However, please make always sure that you have the rights to do this.) These “curators” take care of submitting the bibliographic details and uploading full text versions formatted in CEF. The names of the curators are mentioned on each paper they submit to CEPA.

As a curator you first need to format the paper you are going to upload in CEF (see entry on What is CEF? in this FAQ). This can be done in Word or any text editor. Then you submit the bibliographical details via ADD. (In order to be identified as curator you need to be logged in.) On the last screen of the submission you can directly add the CEF-formatted paper by pasting it into a text area. (Alternatively you can, of course, upload the full text in another format such a PDF or specify the link from where the full text can be downloaded for free. However, in these cases you won't be listed as curator.)

The markup format CEF was designed for the Constructivist E-Paper Archive (and for the Constructivist Encyclopedia which is still under construction) to offer an easy way to format scholarly publications and read them on all sorts of devices including tablets and smartphones. Also, excerpts from the text can be saved to own's collection of “snippets” with a single tap / mouse click.

Most scholarly publications consist mainly of plain text and a bit of paragraph formatting such as headings, quotes, notes and references, and character formatting such as italic and bold. Therefore the main body of a CEF document is plain text in which paragraphs are separated by one or more carriage returns. All formatting is added via special characters very similar to HTML, LaTeX and Wiki markup. So everyone who knows any of these formatting systems will find it very easy to apply CEF formatting. Always start with the plain text and add formats where needed.

For a descriptions of how to format a text in CEF, refer to the A Quick Introduction to CEF Formatting. To convert an existing paper, follow the these steps:
Step 1: Open this paper in Word or copy the content of a PDF document and paste it into new Word document. There, format headings, italic text, etc. according to the introduction manual. You can keep it simple. For many papers headings, italic, and quotes are the only formatting elements needed.
Step 2a: If the CEF-formatted paper is yet to be added to CEPA, proceed as described in What Is a Curator? above.
Step 2b: If you want to add the CEF-formatted full text to a paper that is already in CEPA, go to this paper's CEPA page (either by typing its URL or by searching for its title). On this page, hoover with the mouse over the bibliographic details, which will make several buttons appear. If you are entitled to edit the paper (because you are either its author or received “curator” permission) the leftmost button will read either [Add CEF] (if there is no CEF version yet) or simply [CEF] (if there is already a CEF version). Click on it. This will take you to a new screen with a text area into which you can paste the content of the CEF version you prepared in Step 1. Press the button “Update Publication” to save the changes.

The predecessor of CEPA is the still operational Radical Constructivism Portal, which was established in 1997 to offer a hand-picked collection of almost 1000 links to constructivist material on the internet. With the creation of the journal Constructivist Foundations in 2005 it became necessary to substantially enlarge the scope of constructivist approaches while at the same time focus on material that fulfills the criteria of scholarly publishing. Since constructivist publications cover a wide range of disciplines they are scattered over many journals and books and hence are often difficult to find. In addition, many constructivist concepts have a long history but unfortunately the original research papers are difficult to find.

CEPA provides the solution to both problems: It offers a single-point access to constructivist publications covering many disciplines and publication fora, and it provides access to older ground-breaking publications upon which a new generation of constructivists can build.