 The journal was established in 1986 by Victor H. Mair, 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 format, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.