Oxford University Press (OUP) is a highly-respected publishing house and a department of the University of Oxford in England.

It was chartered as one of the two privileged presses in 1634. "OUP" publishes many reference, professional, and academic works including the Oxford English Dictionary, the Concise Oxford Dictionary and the Dictionary of National Biography.

OUP grew into the world's largest press after it received the rights to publish the King James Version of the Bible and it expanded beyond academic and learned printing. Today it publishes more than 4,500 new books a year and employs some 3,700 people worldwide.

It has lent its name to the Oxford comma.

The lastest version of the Dictionary of National Biography was researched over 12 years, and is a 60-volume edition which contains more than 50,000 biographies. Its costs as of 2005 was £7,500. However, it was widely criticised for being factually inaccurate in many important entries, like in their Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen, George V and Edward VIII articles. According to The Observer,

the acclaimed Oxford don and constitutional specialist Vernon Bogdanor believes the Dictionary of National Biography has failed to come up to Oxford's standards. 'It has indirectly done damage to the university,' he said this weekend. 'I can only comment on the areas of my own expertise, but these entries seem to have been written by the constitutionally illiterate.'" (Observer, March 6, 2005)

Reference

• Thorpe, Vanessa (March 6, 2005). "At £7,500 for the set, you'd think they'd get their facts right". The Observer.[1]

External link

• http://www.oup.co.uk/