Encyclopædia Britannica
New American edition of the (1899)
Author(s)	As of 2008, 4,411 named contributors
Country	United Kingdom (1768–1900) United States (1901–present)
Language	English
Subject(s)	General
Genre(s)	Reference encyclopedia
Publisher	Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Publication date	1768–present
Media type	As of 2008, 32 volumes (hardbound)
ISBN	ISBN 1-59339-292-3
OCLC Number	71783328

The (Latin for "British Encyclopaedia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., a privately held corporation. Articles are aimed at educated adults, and written by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert contributors. It is regarded as one of the most scholarly of encyclopaedias.

The is the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still in print. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and grew in popularity and size, its third edition (1797) and supplement (1801) reaching 20 volumes together. Its rising stature helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th edition (1875–1889) and the 11th edition (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Beginning with the 11th edition, the shortened and simplified articles to broaden its North American market. In 1933, the became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted and every article updated on a schedule.

The current 15th edition has a unique three-part structure: a 12-volume of short articles (generally fewer than 750 words), a 17-volume of long articles (two to 310 pages) and a single volume to give a hierarchical outline of knowledge. The is meant for quick fact-checking and as a guide to the ; readers are advised to study the outline to understand a subject's context and to find more detailed articles. The size of the has remained roughly constant over 70 years, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. Although publication has been based in the United States since 1901, the has maintained British spelling.

The has had difficulty remaining profitable. Some articles in earlier editions have been criticised for inaccuracy, bias, or unqualified contributors. The accuracy in parts of the present edition has likewise been questioned, although criticisms have been challenged by management.

History

Ownership has changed many times, past owners including the Scottish publisher A & C Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck and William Benton. The present owner of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. is Jacqui Safra, a Swiss billionaire and actor. Recent advances in information technology and the rise of electronic encyclopedias such as and Wikipedia have reduced the demand for print encyclopedias. To remain competitive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has stressed the reputation of the , reduced its price and production costs, and developed electronic versions on CD-ROM, DVD, and the World Wide Web. Since the early 1930s, the company has promoted spin-off reference works.

Editions

Title page of the first edition of the

The has been issued in 15 editions, with multi-volume supplements to the 3rd and 5th editions (see the Table below). The 10th edition was only a supplement to the 9th, just as the 12th and 13th editions were supplements to the 11th. The 15th underwent massive re-organisation in 1985, but the updated, current version is still known as the 15th.

Throughout history, the has had two aims: to be an excellent reference book and to provide educational material. In 1974, the 15th edition adopted a third goal: to systematise all human knowledge. The history of the can be divided into five eras, punctuated by changes in management or re-organisation of the dictionary.

1768–1826

In the first era (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the was managed and published by its founders, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, by Archibald Constable, and by others. The was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh as the . In part, it was conceived in reaction to the French of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (published 1751–1772), which had been inspired by Chambers's (first edition 1728). The was primarily a Scottish enterprise; it is one of the most enduring legacies of the Scottish Enlightenment. In this era, the moved from being a three-volume set (1st edition) compiled by one young editor — William Smellie — to a 20-volume set written by numerous authorities. Several other encyclopaedias competed throughout this period, among them editions of Abraham Rees's and Coleridge's .

The early 19th-century editions of included seminal research such as Thomas Young's article on Egypt, which included the translation of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone (pictured).

1827–1901

During the second era (7th–9th editions, 1827–1901), the was managed by the Edinburgh publishing firm, A & C Black. Although some contributors were again recruited through friendships of the chief editors, notably Macvey Napier, others were attracted by the reputation. The contributors often came from other countries and included the world's most respected authorities in their fields. A general index of all articles was included for the first time in the 7th edition, a practice maintained until 1974. The first English-born editor-in-chief was Thomas Spencer Baynes, who oversaw the production of the 9th edition; dubbed the "Scholar's Edition", the 9th is the most scholarly . However, by the close of the 19th century, the 9th edition was outdated and the faced financial difficulties.

1901–1973

In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–73), the was managed by American businessmen who introduced direct marketing and door-to-door sales. The American owners gradually simplified articles, making them less scholarly for a mass market. The 10th edition was a rapidly produced supplement to the 9th, but the 11th edition is still praised for excellence; its owner, Horace Hooper, lavished enormous effort on its perfection. When Hooper fell into financial difficulties, the was managed by Sears Roebuck for 18 years (1920–23, 1928–43). In 1932, the vice-president of Sears, Elkan Harrison Powell, assumed presidency of the ; in 1936, he began the policy of continuous revision. This was a departure from earlier practice, in which the articles were not changed until a new edition was produced, at roughly 25-year intervals, some articles unchanged from earlier editions. Powell developed new educational products that built upon the reputation. In 1943, ownership passed to William Benton, who managed the until his death in 1973. Benton set up the Benton Foundation, which managed the until 1996. In 1968, near the end of this era, the celebrated its bicentennial.

U.S. advertisement for the 11th edition from the May 1913 issue of

1974–1994

In the fourth era (15th edition, 1974–94), the introduced its 15th edition, which was re-organised into three parts: the , the , and the . Under Mortimer J. Adler (member of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and its chair from 1974; director of editorial planning for the 15th edition of from 1965), the sought not only to be a good reference work and educational tool but to systematise all human knowledge. The absence of a separate index and the grouping of articles into parallel encyclopaedias (the and ) provoked a "firestorm of criticism" of the initial 15th edition. In response, the 15th edition was completely re-organised and indexed for a re-release in 1985. This second version of the 15th edition continues to be published and revised; the latest version is the 2010 print version. The official title of the 15th edition is the , although it has also been promoted as .

1994–present

In the fifth era (1994–present), digital versions have been developed and released on optical media and online. In 1996, the was bought by Jacqui Safra at well below its estimated value, owing to the company's financial difficulties. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc split in 1999. One part retained the company name and developed the print version, and the other, Britannica.com Inc., developed digital versions. Since 2001, the two companies shared a CEO, originally Ilan Yeshua, who has continued Powell's strategy of introducing new products with the name.

Dedications

The was dedicated to the reigning British monarch from 1788 to 1901 and then, upon its sale to an American partnership, to the British monarch and the President of the United States. Thus, the 11th edition is "dedicated by Permission to His Majesty George the Fifth, King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, and to William Howard Taft, President of the United States of America." The order of the dedications has changed with the relative power of the United States and Britain, and with relative sales; the 1954 version of the 14th edition is "Dedicated by Permission to the Heads of the Two English-Speaking Peoples, Dwight David Eisenhower, President of the United States of America, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second." Consistent with this tradition, the 2007 version of the current 15th edition was "dedicated by permission to the current President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II," while the 2010 version of the current 15th edition is "dedicated by permission to Barack Obama President of the United States of America and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II."

Critical and popular assessments

Reputation

A copperplate by Andrew Bell from the 1st edition.

Since the 3rd edition, the has enjoyed a popular and critical reputation for general excellence. Various editions from the 3rd to the 9th were pirated for sale in the United States, beginning with Dobson's Encyclopædia. On the release of the 14th edition, magazine dubbed the the "Patriarch of the Library". In a related advertisement, naturalist William Beebe was quoted as saying that the was "beyond comparison because there is no competitor." References to the can be found throughout English literature, most notably in one of Arthur Conan Doyle's favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Red-Headed League". The tale was highlighted by the Lord Mayor of London, Gilbert Inglefield, at the bicentennial of the .

The has a reputation for summarising knowledge. To further their education, many have devoted themselves to reading the entire , taking anywhere from three to 22 years to do so. When Fat'h Ali became the Shah of Persia in 1797, he was given a set of the 3rd edition, which he read completely; after this feat, he extended his royal title to include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the ." Writer George Bernard Shaw claimed to have read the complete 9th edition—except for the science articles—and Richard Evelyn Byrd took the as reading material for his five-month stay at the South Pole in 1934, while Philip Beaver read it during a sailing expedition. More recently, A.J. Jacobs, an editor at magazine, read the entire 2002 version of the 15th edition, describing his experiences in the well-received 2004 book, . Only two people are known to have read two independent editions: the author C. S. Forester and Amos Urban Shirk, an American businessman, who read the 11th and 14th editions, devoting roughly three hours per night for four and a half years to read the 11th. Several editors-in-chief of the are likely to have read their editions completely, such as William Smellie (1st edition), William Robertson Smith (9th edition), and Walter Yust (14th edition).

Awards

The online won the 2005 Codie award for "Best Online Consumer Information Service"; the Codie awards are granted yearly by the Software and Information Industry Association to recognise the best products among categories of software. In 2006, the was again a finalist. Similarly, the CD/DVD-ROM version of the received the 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers, and Codie awards in 2000, 2001 and 2002. On 15 July 2009, was awarded a spot as one of "Top Ten Superbrands in the UK" by a panel of more than 2,000 independent reviewers, as reported by the BBC.

Coverage of topics

Topics are chosen in part by reference to the "Outline of Knowledge". The bulk of the is devoted to geography (26% of the ), biography (14%), biology and medicine (11%), literature (7%), physics and astronomy (6%), religion (5%), art (4%), Western philosophy (4%), and law (3%). A complementary study of the found that geography accounted for 25% of articles, science 18%, social sciences 17%, biography 17%, and all other humanities 25%. Writing in 1992, one reviewer judged that the "range, depth, and catholicity of coverage [of the ] are unsurpassed by any other general encyclopedia."

The does not cover topics in equivalent detail; for example, the whole of Buddhism and most other religions is covered in a single article, whereas 14 articles are devoted to Christianity, comprising nearly half of all religion articles. However, the has been lauded as the biased of general encyclopedias marketed to Western readers and praised for its biographies of important women of all eras.

It can be stated without fear of contradiction that the 15th edition of the accords non-Western cultural, social, and scientific developments more notice than any general English-language encyclopedia currently on the market.

—Kenneth Kister, in (1994)

Criticisms

The has received criticism, especially as editions become outdated. It is expensive to produce a completely new edition of the and its editors delay for as long as fiscally sensible (usually about 25 years). For example, despite continuous revision, the 14th edition had become outdated after 35 years (1929–1964). When American physicist Harvey Einbinder detailed its failings in his 1964 book, , the encyclopaedia was provoked to produce the 15th edition, which required 10 years of work. It is still difficult to keep the current; one recent critic writes, "it is not difficult to find articles that are out-of-date or in need of revision", noting that the longer articles are more likely to be outdated than the shorter articles. Information in the is sometimes inconsistent with the corresponding article(s), mainly because of the failure to update one or the other. The bibliographies of the articles have been criticised for being more out-of-date than the articles themselves.

While s authors have included authorities such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Leon Trotsky, some have been criticised for lack of expertise:

With a temerity almost appalling, [the contributor, Mr. Philips] ranges over nearly the whole field of European history, political, social, ecclesiastical... The grievance is that [this work] lacks authority. This, too—this reliance on editorial energy instead of on ripe special learning—may, alas, be also counted an "Americanizing": for certainly nothing has so cheapened the scholarship of our American encyclopaedias.

—Prof. George L. Burr, in the (1911)

Bias

Authorities ranging from Virginia Woolf to professors criticised the 11th edition for having bourgeois and old-fashioned opinions on art, literature, and social sciences. For example, it was faulted for neglecting the work of Sigmund Freud. A contemporary Cornell professor, Edward B. Titchener, wrote in 1912, "the new does not reproduce the psychological atmosphere of its day and generation... Despite the halo of authority, and despite the scrutiny of the staff, the great bulk of the secondary articles in general psychology ... are not adapted to the requirements of the intelligent reader."

Editorial choices

The is occasionally criticised for its editorial choices. Given its roughly constant size, the encyclopaedia has needed to reduce or eliminate some topics to accommodate others, resulting in controversial decisions. The initial 15th edition (1974–1985) was faulted for having reduced or eliminated coverage of children's literature, military decorations, and the French poet Joachim du Bellay; editorial mistakes were also alleged, such as inconsistent sorting of Japanese biographies. Its elimination of the index was condemned, as was the apparently arbitrary division of articles into the and . Summing up, one critic called the initial 15th edition a "qualified failure...[that] cares more for juggling its format than for preserving information." More recently, reviewers from the American Library Association were surprised to find that most educational articles had been eliminated from the 1992 , along with the article on psychology.

-appointed contributors are occasionally mistaken or unscientific. A notorious instance from the early years is the rejection of Newtonian gravity by George Gleig, the chief editor of the 3rd edition (1788–1797), who wrote that gravity was caused by the classical element of fire. However, the has also staunchly defended a scientific approach to emotional topics, as it did with William Robertson Smith's articles on religion in the 9th edition, particularly his article stating that the Bible was not historically accurate (1875).

Wendy Doniger, who is on the editorial board of Britannica, has been criticized for her negative portrayal of Hinduism. Britannica's presentation of Hinduism has also been criticized.

Racism and sexism

Critics have charged past editions with racism and sexism. For instance, the 11th edition (1910–1911) characterises the Ku Klux Klan as protecting the white race and restoring order to the American South after the American Civil War, citing the need to "control the negro", and "the frequent occurrence of the crime of rape by negro men upon white women." Similarly, the "Civilization" article argues for eugenics, stating that it is irrational to "propagate low orders of intelligence, to feed the ranks of paupers, defectives and criminals ... which to-day constitute so threatening an obstacle to racial progress." The 11th edition has no biography of Marie Curie, despite her winning of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, although she is mentioned briefly under the biography of her husband Pierre Curie. The employed a large female editorial staff that wrote hundreds of articles for which they were not given credit.

Inaccuracy

In 1912 mathematician L. C. Karpinski criticised the for inaccuracies in articles on the history of mathematics, none of which had been written by specialists.

In 1917, art critic Willard Huntington Wright published , which highlighted inaccuracies and English biases of the , particularly in humanities. Many of Wright's criticisms were addressed in later editions. However, his book was denounced as a polemic by some contemporary reviewers; for example, the wrote that a "spiteful and shallow temper...pervades the book", while opined, "it is unfortunate for Mr Wright's remorseless purpose that he has proceeded in an unscientific spirit and given so little objective justification of his criticism."

English writer and former priest Joseph McCabe claimed in (1947) that was censored under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church after the 11th edition.

American physicist Harvey Einbinder detailed failings of the 14th edition in his 1964 book, .

An Irish newspaper, the , said in February 2010 that Britannica offers a "farcically inaccurate version" of the country's history. An opposition senator said: "This screwy version of events is a gross insult to our people and our history. That it is being used to educate our children is even more ridiculous." The Department of Education, which paid €450,000 to give children in school online access to the Encyclopaedia, said it was "disappointed".

The has always conceded that errors are inevitable. Speaking of the 3rd edition (1788–1797), its chief editor George Gleig wrote that "perfection seems to be incompatible with the nature of works constructed on such a plan, and embracing such a variety of subjects." More recently (March 2006), the wrote that "we in no way mean to imply that is error-free; we have never made such a claim." The sentiment is expressed by its original editor, William Smellie:

With regard to errors in general, whether falling under the denomination of mental, typographical or accidental, we are conscious of being able to point out a greater number than any critic whatever. Men who are acquainted with the innumerable difficulties of attending the execution of a work of such an extensive nature will make proper allowances. To these we appeal, and shall rest satisfied with the judgment they pronounce.

—William Smellie, in the Preface to the 1st edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica

Present status

15th edition of the . The initial volume with the green spine is the ; the red-spined and black-spined volumes are the and the , respectively. The last three volumes are the 2002 Book of the Year (black spine) and the two-volume index (cyan spine).

Print version

Since 1985, the has had four parts: the the the and a two-volume index. The s articles are found in the and which encompass 12 and 17 volumes, respectively, each volume having roughly one thousand pages. The 2007 has 699 in-depth articles, ranging in length from 2 to 310 pages and having references and named contributors. In contrast, the 2007 has roughly 65,000 articles, the vast majority (about 97%) of which contain fewer than 750 words, no references, and no named contributors. The articles are intended for quick fact-checking and to help in finding more thorough information in the . The articles are meant both as authoritative, well-written articles on their subjects and as storehouses of information not covered elsewhere. The longest article (310 pages) is on the United States, and resulted from the merger of the articles on the individual states.

Information can be found in the by following the cross-references in the and ; however, these are sparse, averaging one cross-reference per page. Hence, readers are recommended to consult instead the alphabetical index or the which organises the s contents by topic.

The core of the is its "Outline of Knowledge", which aims to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge. Accordingly, the Outline is consulted by the s editors to decide which articles should be included in the and . The Outline is also intended to be a study guide, to put subjects in their proper perspective, and to suggest a series of articles for the student wishing to learn a topic in depth. However, libraries have found that it is scarcely used, and reviewers have recommended that it be dropped from the encyclopedia. The also has color transparencies of human anatomy and several appendices listing the staff members, advisors, and contributors to all three parts of the Britannica.

Taken together, the and comprise roughly 40 million words and 24,000 images. The two-volume index has 2,350 pages, listing the 228,274 topics covered in the together with 474,675 subentries under those topics. The generally prefers British spelling over American; for example, it uses (not ), (not ), and (not ). However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as rather than . Common alternative spellings are provided with cross-references such as "Color: Colour."

Since 1936, the articles of the have been revised on a regular schedule, with at least 10% of them considered for revision each year. According to one Britannica website, 46% of its articles were revised over the past three years; however, according to another Britannica web-site, only 35% of the articles were revised.

The alphabetisation of articles in the and follows strict rules. Diacritical marks and non-English letters are ignored, while numerical entries such as "1812, War of" are alphabetised as if the number had been written out ("Eighteen-twelve, War of"). Articles with identical names are ordered first by persons, then by places, then by things. Rulers with identical names are organised first alphabetically by country and then by chronology; thus, Charles III of France precedes Charles I of England, listed in as the ruler of Great Britain and Ireland. (That is, they are alphabetised as if their titles were "Charles, France, 3" and "Charles, Great Britain and Ireland, 1".) Similarly, places that share names are organised alphabetically by country, then by ever-smaller political divisions.

Related printed material

was first published in 1934 as 12 volumes. It was expanded to 15 volumes in 1947, and renamed in 1963. It was taken off the market after the 1984 printing.

Children's Britannica

A British edited by John Armitage was issued in London in 1960. Its contents were determined largely by the 11-plus standardized tests given in Britain. Britannica introduced the to the U.S. market in 1988, aimed at ages 7 to 14.

In 1961 a 16 volume was issued for children just learning to read.

is aimed at children ages six to twelve, and the is for children aged three to six (issued 1974 to 1991).

There have been and are several abridged encyclopedias. The single-volume has 28,000 short articles condensing the larger 32-volume . first published in 2007, incorporating the former is aimed at 10–17 year olds and consists of 26 volumes and 11,000 pages.

Since 1938, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has published annually a covering the past year's events, which is available online back to the 1994 edition (covering the events of 1993). The company also publishes several specialised reference works, such as (Wiley, 2006).

Optical disc, online, and mobile versions

Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, available on DVD

The contains over 55 million words and just over 100,000 articles. This includes 73,645 regular articles, with the remainder drawn from the the and the (1993–2004), plus a few "classic" articles from early editions of the encyclopaedia. The package includes a range of supplementary content including maps, videos, sound clips, animations and web links. It also offers study tools and dictionary and thesaurus entries from Merriam-Webster.

is a web site with more than 120,000 articles and is updated regularly. It has daily features, updates and links to news reports from and the BBC. Roughly 60% of Encyclopædia Britannica's revenue comes from online operations, of which around 15% comes from subscriptions to the consumer version of the websites. Subscriptions are available on a yearly, monthly or weekly basis. Special subscription plans are offered to schools, colleges and libraries; such institutional subscribers constitute an important part of Britannica's business. Articles may be accessed online for free, but only a few opening lines of text are displayed. Beginning in early 2007, the made articles freely available if they are linked to from an external site; such external links often improve an article's rankings in search engine results.

On 20 February 2007, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced that it was working with mobile phone search company AskMeNow to launch a mobile encyclopedia. Users will be able to send a question via text message, and AskMeNow will search s 28,000-article concise encyclopedia to return an answer to the query. Daily topical features sent directly to users' mobile phones are also planned.

On 3 June 2008, an initiative to facilitate collaboration between online expert and amateur scholarly contributors for Britannica's on-line content (in the spirit of a wiki), with editorial oversight from Britannica staff, was announced. Approved contributions would be credited, though contributing automatically grants Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. perpetual, irrevocable license to those contributions.

On 22 January 2009, Britannica's president, Jorge Cauz, announced that the company would be accepting edits and additions to the online Britannica website from the public. The published edition of the encyclopedia will not be affected by the changes. Individuals wishing to edit the Britannica website will have to register under their real name and address prior to editing or submitting their content. All edits submitted will be reviewed and checked and will have to be approved by the encyclopedia's professional staff. Contributions from non-academic users will sit in a separate section from the expert-generated content, as will content submitted by non- scholars. Articles written by users, if vetted and approved, will also only be available in a special section of the website, separate from the professional articles. Official material would carry a "Britannica Checked" stamp, to distinguish it from the user-generated content.

On 14 September 2010, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced a partnership with mobile phone development company Concentric Sky to launch a series of iPhone products aimed at the K-12 market. On 20 July 2011, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced that Concentric Sky had ported the Britannica Kids product line to Intel's Intel Atom-based Netbooks.

Personnel and management

Contributors

The 2007 print version of the boasts 4,411 contributors, many eminent in their fields, such as Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman, astronomer Carl Sagan, and surgeon Michael DeBakey. Roughly a quarter of the contributors are deceased, some as long ago as 1947 (Alfred North Whitehead), while another quarter are retired or emeritus. Most (approximately 98%) contribute to only a single article; however, 64 contributed to three articles, 23 contributed to four articles, 10 contributed to five articles, and 8 contributed to more than five articles. An exceptionally prolific contributor is Dr. Christine Sutton of the University of Oxford, who contributed 24 articles on particle physics.

Staff

Portrait of Thomas Spencer Baynes, editor of the 9th edition. Painted in 1888, it now hangs in the Senate Room of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Dale Hoiberg, a sinologist, is the Senior Vice President and editor-in-chief. Among his predecessors as editors-in-chief were Hugh Chisholm (1902–1924), James Louis Garvin (1926–1932), Franklin Henry Hooper (1932–1938), Walter Yust (1938–1960), Harry Ashmore (1960–1963), Warren E. Preece (1964–1968, 1969–1975), Sir William Haley (1968–1969), Philip W. Goetz (1979–1991), and Robert McHenry (1992–1997). Anita Wolff and Theodore Pappas serve as the current Deputy Editor and Executive Editor, respectively. Prior Executive Editors include John V. Dodge (1950–1964) and Philip W. Goetz.

The current editorial staff of the includes five Senior Editors and nine Associate Editors, supervised by Dale Hoiberg and four others. The editorial staff help to write the articles of the and some sections of the .

Editorial advisors

The has an Editorial Board of Advisors, which includes 12 distinguished scholars:

• author Nicholas Carr,
• religion scholar Wendy Doniger,
• political economist Benjamin M. Friedman,
• Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus Leslie H. Gelb,
• computer scientist David Gelernter,
• Physics Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann,
• Carnegie Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian,
• philosopher Thomas Nagel,
• cognitive scientist Donald Norman,
• musicologist Don Michael Randel,
• Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and
• cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch.

The and its were produced by dozens of editorial advisors under the direction of Mortimer J. Adler. Roughly half of these advisors have since died, including some of the Outline's chief architects: Rene Dubos (d. 1982), Loren Eiseley (d. 1977), Harold D. Lasswell (d. 1978), Mark Van Doren (d. 1972), Peter Ritchie Calder (d. 1982) and Mortimer J. Adler (d. 2001). The also lists just under 4,000 advisors who were consulted for the unsigned articles.

Corporate structure

In January 1996, the was purchased from the Benton Foundation by billionaire Swiss financier Jacqui Safra, who serves as its current Chair of the Board. In 1997, Don Yannias, a long-time associate and investment advisor of Safra, became CEO of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. A new company, Britannica.com Inc. was spun off in 1999 to develop the digital versions of the ; Yannias assumed the role of CEO in the new company, while that of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. remained vacant for two years. Yannias' tenure at Britannica.com Inc. was marked by missteps, large lay-offs and financial losses. In 2001, Yannias was replaced by Ilan Yeshua, who reunited the leadership of the two companies. Yannias later returned to investment management, but remains on the Board of Directors.

In 2003, former management consultant Jorge Aguilar-Cauz was appointed President of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Cauz is the senior executive and reports directly to the Board of Directors. Cauz has been pursuing alliances with other companies and extending the brand to new educational and reference products, continuing the strategy pioneered by former CEO Elkan Harrison Powell in the mid-1930s.

Under Safra's ownership, the company has experienced financial difficulties, and has responded by reducing the price of its products and implementing drastic cost cuts. According to a 2003 report in the , the management has eliminated employee 401(k) accounts and encouraged the use of free images. These changes have had negative impacts, as freelance contributors have waited up to six months for checks and the staff have gone years without pay rises.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. now owns registered trademarks on the words , , , , and , as well as on its thistle logo. It has exercised its trademark rights as recently as 2005.

Competition

As the is a general encyclopaedia, it does not seek to compete with specialised encyclopaedias such as the or the , which can devote much more space to their chosen topics. In its first years, the s main competitor was the general encyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers and, soon thereafter, and Coleridge's . In the 20th century, successful competitors included the and the . Nevertheless, from the 9th edition onwards, the was widely considered to have the greatest authority of any general English language encyclopaedia, especially because of its broad coverage and eminent authors. However, the print version of the is significantly more expensive than its competitors.

Since the early 1990s, the has faced new challenges from digital information sources. The Internet, facilitated by the development of search engines, has grown into a common source of information for many people, and provides easy access to reliable original sources and expert opinions, thanks in part to initiatives such as Google Books, MIT's release of its educational materials and the open PubMed Central library of the National Library of Medicine. In general, the Internet tends to provide more current coverage than print media, due to the ease with which material on the Internet can be updated. In rapidly changing fields such as science, technology, politics, culture and modern history, the has struggled to stay up-to-date, a problem first analysed systematically by its former editor Walter Yust. Although the is now available both in multimedia form and over the Internet, its preeminence is being challenged by other online encyclopaedias, such as Wikipedia.

Print encyclopaedias

The has been compared with other print encyclopaedias, both qualitatively and quantitatively. A well-known comparison is that of Kenneth Kister, who gave a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the with two comparable encyclopaedias, and the . For the quantitative analysis, ten articles were selected at random – circumcision, Charles Drew, Galileo, Philip Glass, heart disease, IQ, panda bear, sexual harassment, Shroud of Turin and Uzbekistan – and letter grades of A–D or F were awarded in four categories: coverage, accuracy, clarity, and recency. In all four categories and for all three encyclopaedias, the four average grades fell between B− and B+, chiefly because none of the encyclopaedias had an article on sexual harassment in 1994. In the accuracy category, the received one "D" and seven "A"s, received eight "A"s, and received one "D" and seven "A"s; thus, received an average score of 92% for accuracy to ′s 95% and 92%. The 1994 was faulted for publishing an inflammatory story about Charles Drew that had long been discredited. In the timeliness category, averaged an 86% to ′s 90% and 85%. After a more thorough qualitative comparison of all three encyclopedias, Kister recommended as the superior encyclopaedia, primarily on the strength of its excellent writing, balanced presentation and easy navigation.

has not been in print for 12 years, since 1998. The was last published in 2006. was last published in 2010.

Digital encyclopedias on optical media

The most notable competitor of the among CD/DVD-ROM digital encyclopedias was , now discontinued, a modern, multimedia encyclopedia that incorporated three print encyclopedias: , and the . was the top-selling multimedia encyclopaedia, based on total U.S. retail sales from January 2000 to February 2006. Both occupied the same price range, with the CD or DVD costing US$50 and the Microsoft Encarta Premium 2007 DVD costing US$45. The contains 100,000 articles and (U.S. only), and offers Primary and Secondary School editions. contained 66,000 articles, a user-friendly Visual Browser, interactive maps, math, language and homework tools, a U.S. and UK dictionary, and a youth edition. Like , the has been criticised for being biased towards United States audiences; the United Kingdom-related articles are updated less often, maps of the United States are more detailed than those of other countries, and it lacks a UK dictionary. Like the , was available online by subscription, although some content could be accessed for free.

Internet encyclopedias

Online alternatives to the include Wikipedia, a freely available Web-based free-content encyclopedia. A key difference between the two encyclopaedias lies in article authorship. The 699 articles are generally written by identified contributors, and the roughly 65,000 articles are the work of the editorial staff and identified outside consultants. Thus, a article either has known authorship or a set of possible authors (the editorial staff). With the exception of the editorial staff, most of the s contributors are experts in their field—some are Nobel laureates. By contrast, the articles of Wikipedia are written by a community of editors with varying levels of expertise: most editors do not claim any particular expertise; of those who do, many are anonymous and have no verifiable credentials. Another difference is the pace of article change: the is published in print every few years, while Wikipedia's articles are likely to update frequently. Robert McHenry stated that Wikipedia cannot hope to rival the in accuracy.

On 14 December 2005, in a study, the journal chose articles from both sites in a wide range of topics and sent them to what it called "relevant" field experts for peer review. The experts then compared the competing articles--one from each site on a given topic--side by side, but were not told which article came from which site. got back 42 usable reviews from its field of experts.

In the end, the journal found just eight serious errors, such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts, in the articles. Of those, four came from each site. They did, however, discover a series of factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. All told, Wikipedia had 162 such problems, while Britannica had 123.

That averages out to 2.92 mistakes per article for and 3.86 for Wikipedia. In its detailed 20-page rebuttal, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. characterized s study as flawed and misleading and called for a "prompt" retraction. It noted that two of the articles in the study were taken from a year book, and not the encyclopedia; another two were from (called the on the company's web site). The rebuttal went on to mention that some of the articles presented to reviewers were combinations of several articles, and that other articles were merely excerpts but were penalised for factual omissions. The company also noted that several facts classified as errors by were minor spelling variations, and that several of its alleged errors were matters of interpretation. defended its story and declined to retract, stating that, as it was comparing Wikipedia with the web version of Britannica, it used whatever relevant material was available on Britannica's website.

Interviewed in February 2009, the Managing Director of Britannica UK said:

Wikipedia is a fun site to use and has a lot of interesting entries on there, but their approach wouldn't work for . My job is to create more awareness of our very different approaches to publishing in the public mind. They're a chisel, we're a drill, and you need to have the correct tool for the job.

Edition summary

See also

• List of encyclopedias by branch of knowledge
• List of encyclopedias by language (English)
• List of historical encyclopedias
• List of online encyclopedias

Further reading

Official site