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The Hsu-Tang Library

On the launching of a new library of classical Chinese literature

250 years ago, Ji Yun compiled one of the world’s largest premodern encyclopedias for the Chinese court. This fall Oxford University Press launches the first endowed bilingual translation library of Classical Chinese Literature thanks to a generous gift by Ji Yun’s descendant, Agnes Hsin-mei Hsu-Tang and her husband Oscar Tang.

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Science in the time of war: voices from Ukraine

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 […]

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Open Access Week 2023 at Oxford University Press

What does “community” mean to you?

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.

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Title cover of "Analysis" journal, published by Oxford University Press

Should animals have the right to vote?

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.

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Title cover of "The Rise and Fall of Animal Experimentation" by Richard J. Miller, published by Oxford University Press

Animal pharm is closing its doors

Until the middle of the twentieth century, human beings had no defense against deadly microbial diseases. Bubonic plague, cholera, tuberculosis, and syphilis; waves of infectious diseases regularly swept across the globe killing millions of people. But then, suddenly, everything changed.  In 1935, the Bayer drug company in Germany was experimenting with the pharmaceutical properties of […]

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Word Origins

In praise of sloth

The hero of today’s blog post is the adjective “slow.” No words look less inspiring, but few are more opaque.

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The Oxford Comment podcast

Supporting the future of peer review [podcast]

Every year, Peer Review Week honors the contributions of scientists, academics, and researchers in all fields for the hours of work they put into peer reviewing manuscripts to ensure quality work is published. This year, the theme of Peer Review Week is “The Future of Peer Review.”

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