Britannica Academic » Britannica (2024)

FAQs

Is the Britannica Academic a reliable source? ›

Britannica's content is among the most trusted in the world. Every article is written, and continually fact-checked, by our experts.

A.J. Jacobs was not the first to read the entire Britannica. The earliest recorded example was Fath Ali, who upon becoming the Shah of Persia in 1797, was given a gift of the 3rd edition of the Britannica.

Is Encyclopedia Britannica considered authoritative enough for academic paper citations? No, because, being essentially a compiled summary of data secured from other sources, the Encyclopedia Britannica is considered a secondary source.

For serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, 4 were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in Britannica (1:1). The study concluded that "Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries", although Wikipedia's articles were often "poorly structured".

No, the Encyclopedia Britannica is generally a tertiary source. An encyclopedia references information without any analysis or opinion; therefore, it is a tertiary source.

Encyclopedias are considered a scholarly source because the content is almost always written by scholars on the subject. However, the entries are not written for other scholars but for a general audience. Entries are reviewed by an editorial board, but they are not “peer-reviewed”.

Long before he became the CEO of Tesla, and even before he cofounded PayPal, a young Elon Musk was reading science-fiction novels for up to 10 hours a day. He also reportedly read through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica when he was 9 years old. He still credits a love of books for his vast knowledge about rockets.

Since his childhood, books have played a crucial role in fueling Musk's ambitions. It's said that he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica at age nine and would pore through science fiction novels for more than 10 hours a day.

In the 21st century, the Britannica suffered first from competition with the digital multimedia encyclopaedia Microsoft Encarta, and later with the online peer-produced encyclopaedia Wikipedia. In March 2012, it announced it would no longer publish printed editions and would focus instead on the online version.

The online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica is a trusted source used by more than 4,755 universities worldwide, including Yale, Harvard and Oxford.

Can I cite Britannica in a college paper? ›

Every Britannica article has a citation icon at the top of the page. Click on the citation icon and MLA will come up by default. Click on the Select citation style pull down menu to select APA. Grab your citation.

Last Name, First Name. Encyclopedia/Dictionary name, Edition ed., s.v. “Article Title.” Publication City: Publisher Name, Year Published. Smith, John. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th ed., s.v. “Internet.” Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009.

Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. Because of its open nature, many teachers and professors often warn students that it should never, under any circ*mstances, be used because it is “unreliable.” As with all things, the situation is much more nuanced than that.

edu or . gov are good sites to be looking for when doing research, but one of the sites that our school encourages us to use is Britannica. It's an encyclopedia with a fairly large database.

While the claim was disputed by Britannica, since then Wikipedia has grown 6-fold in the number of articles; is >85 times the size of 120-volume Encyclopedia Britannica, measured by word count; and has substantially improved its quality.

Notable among the results of such activities was the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1974), which was designed in large part to enhance the role of an encyclopaedia in education and understanding without detracting from its role as a reference book.

Britannica School is an online library of hundreds of thousands of high-quality readings, videos and images created and maintained by Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.