Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Main Types of Publishing

Oxford University Press is perhaps the most diverse publisher of its type. It publishes in many countries in a variety of different languages, for all levels, and across virtually the whole range of academic disciplines. The main criteria in evaluating a new title are its quality and the contribution it makes to the furtherance of scholarship and education.

The strong academic programmes in both the UK and USA span almost all subjects, while the Indian scholarly list is widely acknowledged to be among the most distinguished in the world on subjects of particular relevance to South Asia.

Oxford is among the leading publishers of English Language Teaching books and materials, complemented by a respected list of titles in linguistics and pedagogical theory. The Oxford Reading Tree is the most widely used reading programme in UK schools and has been adapted for use in many other countries worldwide. All of OUP's international branches are leading publishers of schoolbooks, college textbooks, and reference books for their own markets.

Oxford University Press is particularly famous for its dictionaries and reference works. The Oxford English Dictionary, first published in 1928, is a historical dictionary of English, covering the language from the earliest times to the present day. It aims to show not only the current meanings of words, but also to trace their development through time. Entries can contain detailed etymological analysis, and are illustrated by quotations from a wide range of English language sources from around the world, making the OED a unique historical record. It was launched online in March 2000.

As well as the OED, OUP publishes a range of other dictionaries, from the popular Concise Oxford English Dictionary to school dictionaries, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, designed for learners of English as a foreign language, and dictionaries looking at different varieties of English, such as the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, the Australian Oxford Dictionary, or the Dictionary of South African English. Important reference works include the American National Biography, published in 1999, and, in the UK, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published in 2004.