Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
There’s a saying in Western philosophy, echoed in some other philosophical traditions globally: “the end of labor is to gain leisure.” It’s a reminder that for all of the toil and turmoil that we engage in our daily lives, the fruits of such labor come in securing a means to pursue our own self interests.
Kicking off today, Sun Awareness Week (12-18 May) is the start of the British Association of Dermatologists’ (BAD) summer-long campaign to encourage everyone to protect their skin from sun damage and skin cancer, the most common cancer in the UK. There are several types of skin cancer, with melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers being the most common.
In recent years, ultra-processed food (UPFs) consumption has surged globally, raising concerns about its impact on health. Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations typically containing ingredients not commonly used in home cooking, such as hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, flavour enhancers, and emulsifiers.
As we welcome 2025, we reflect on the milestones and achievements that shaped Health Affairs Scholar in 2024. Among the highlights, we introduced our first Calls for Papers, focusing on the critical topics of: Global Aging, Intersections of Social Policies, and Health and Policy Options for the 340B Discount Program.
Far too often health and social care workers are blamed. The decision of the conservative government to prevent social care workers from bringing their families to this country from abroad, for example, suggests that the immigration which is needed to keep the care system afloat is a problem. Indeed, nearly one in five of the social care sector area international, and The King’s Fund suggest that without them the sector will struggle to function. As such governmental actions have inevitably had knock on effects on the availability of care provision in this country. We need a political system that supports and guides health and social care workers. Not one which demonises and detracts from them.
In this blog post, editors of OUP journals delve into the vital aspect of clear communication in a journal article. Anne Foster (Editor of Diplomatic History), Eduardo Franco (Editor-in-Chief of JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer institute and JNCI Monographs), Howard Broman (Editor-in-Chief of ICES Journal of Marine Science), and Michael Schnoor (Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Leukocyte Biology) provide editorial recommendations on achieving clarity, avoiding common mistakes, and creating an effective structure
Brain-imaging technique reveals chatting between TV episodes increases mind match up, even when the topic isn’t TV-related.
Many older adults struggle with isolation and loneliness. Could cats be the solution? At the same time, many humane societies have more cats to rehome than they can manage. Could lonely older adults be the solution?
Publication in peer-reviewed journals is an integral part of academic life, but however successful you are in your research career, you’re likely to receive a lot more rejections than acceptances of your submitted manuscript. Here are 7 suggestions on how to cope, understand, and learn from manuscript rejection.
The iconic African black rhinoceros faces an uncertain future after intense poaching caused a 98% decline in wild populations from 1960 to 1995. The species’ survival within its fragmented natural habitat now relies on dedicated conservation efforts. A study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution reshapes our understanding of the evolutionary and natural history of the black rhinoceros, opening a window into the species’ genetic past while urging us to forge a path toward its conservation.
As the EU confronts multiple challenges, many question whether Germany has finally shed its reluctance to become a leading power in the region. In this blog post, Magnus G Schoeller and Olof Karlsson highlight the key obstacles standing in the way of Germany’s leadership aspirations, its policy implications, and how the country can overcome them.
On 23 February 2022, I drove back to Michigan after giving a talk at the University of Kentucky on genome diversity in Ukraine. My niece Zlata Bilanin, a recent college graduate from Ukraine, was with me. She was calling her friends in Kyiv, worried. A single question was on everyone’s mind: will there be a […]
In this blog post, we hear from OUP’s society publishing collaborators and the ways in which they support diverse communities, including through open access publishing.
The theme of this year’s Open Access Week is “Community Over Commercialisation”. As part of this, we’re looking at different definitions of “community” used within academic research.
Suppose it were suggested that animals’ interests would be even better protected if we recognized a right of political participation to animals. One way to do that would be to have human representatives cast votes on behalf of animals with respect to different legislative proposals.
In this blog post, we explore what OUP is doing to address the challenges to making open access publishing available to all and share information on the volume of articles we waive Article Processing Charges for each year.