Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Whether you are looking to escape into the histories of some libraries or looking to expand your knowledge on the future of reading and research we’ve got something for every librarian with this reading list.
Former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney has observed that society has, unfortunately, come to embody Oscar Wilde’s old aphorism: “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing”.
It is curious how often those who have tried to explain the origin of English idioms have referred to the occupation of printers. Regardless of their success, the attempts are worthy of note.
Innovations in open research can help to address disinformation, making a wider range of information accessible and available, ensuring reproducibility, and facilitating reuse.
We are one more week closer to Halloween, and pumpkins are ubiquitous. How did the pumpkin get its name?
Open research may be the route to surfacing a definitional framework for the monograph in SHAPE disciplines. Director of Open Access, Academic, at OUP Andy Redman explores why in this blog post:
As a mission-driven university press, we strongly support the opening up of research and the benefits for access and inclusion that OA brings. We want to ensure that the transition towards open research is an inclusive process—to use the title of OA week, “it matters how we open knowledge.”
How can a ghost (any ghost) get its name, and why is the etymology of bogymen, gremlins, goblins, and spooks usually unknown?
A bit more is known about the origin of the words thaw and dew than about ice and snow. They are less impenetrable than those two, but they also contain riddles.
Winter is round the corner, and the best way to prepare for it is to read a few murky stories about the etymology of the relevant words: “ice” and “snow.”
When I was growing up, someone in authority told me that way to pronounce often was offen, like off with a little syllabic n at the end. Often was like soften, listen, and glisten, I was warned, with a silent t.
In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist tackles questions from readers.
This blog post looks at five peer review models currently in use, describing what they mean for authors, reviewers and editors, and examines the various benefits and consequences of each.
Why is searching for the origin of “ice” a forlorn hope? Because all the Germanic-speaking people had the same word for “ice,” and yet we don’t know where it came from.
Which library matches your personality? Are you an old soul like the al- Qarawlyyin library? Quirky like the Culture Perth & Kinross Mobile Library? Give our short quiz a go to find out!
In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist discusses two slang idioms: “worth a Jew’s eye” and “to save one’s bacon”.