The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Page Contents
Page Contents
Our Editorial Process
Britannica has been a global leader in information since 1768. We’ve gone from publishing encyclopedia sets to selling CD-ROMs (which may seem even more quaint today than books) to going fully digital. What hasn’t changed is our commitment to being clear, fair, accurate, and relevant.
Why should you trust what you read at Britannica?
That’s a very fair question, and the fact that you thought to ask it means that you know that not all information is created equal. So consider:
- Britannica’s editorial staff is made up of writers and editors who have extensive knowledge in their fields, which range from geography to botany to technology and beyond.
- Britannica commissions work from experts, including leading thinkers in academia and journalism. Notable contributions have come from Nobel laureates and world leaders. Think we’re blowing smoke? Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Madeleine Albright, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, among others, have all written for Britannica.
It’s about our process as much as our people
- Once an article is written, it is reviewed and revised by a team of editors.
- Articles are edited to make sure that they cover the important points a reader needs to know, are written in an engaging way, and are fair, making clear not only what is known about a topic but also what may still be in dispute.
- They are fact-checked according to a 14-point checklist to ensure that we have not only captured the big picture of a topic but also verified all the details.
Making sure it stays right
Unlike the days when the encyclopedia was printed and couldn’t be changed for upwards of a year, today editors at Britannica are continuously updating and revising content.
- When news happens, the relevant Britannica articles are updated by our staff editors or supplemented by a feed from our news partners. Our goal is to go deeper than the who, what, and when of a news event. We want Britannica to be the authoritative source for the context and history you need: the why and the how.
- When we hear from readers about possible mistakes, we investigate and, when necessary, correct. (Mistakes happen, even with a highly exacting process. We are human, after all.) If you have feedback, let us know at [email protected] or by clicking on the feedback button that appears on articles.
Trust, but verify
If after reading all this, you’re still not sure about our process, know that we make it transparent to readers and users how, why, and when we revise articles. Just click on Article History in any article to see what has been done—from adding media to fixing the way an article appears on your phone to updating for developments and more.
The Editors
New on Britannica
See all
Josh Turek
When Democrat Josh Turek decided to run for the U.S. Senate in Iowa, a state that hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008 and had given Donald Trump a 13-point margin of victory in the 2024 presidential election, it wasn’t the hardest or most audacious thing he had done in his life. Not by
Ashley Moody
Ashley Moody is a fifth-generation Floridian who learned about her Florida roots from an early age. Her family members have been prominent citizens in the small central Florida city of Plant City since the late 19th century. She embraced the Moody family legacy by becoming a federal prosecutor, a
The Hunger Games film franchise
The Hunger Games film franchise, series of dystopian films based on the best-selling young adult novels by Suzanne Collins. The franchise originally consisted of four movies—The Hunger Games (2012), Catching Fire (2013), Mockingjay Part 1 (2014), and Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)—that star Jennifer
Ecocide
Ecocide, broadly, a term used to describe severe or large-scale destruction of the natural environment as a consequence of human activity. Although a consistent, widely agreed-on definition of what constitutes ecocide has not yet been arrived at, it may be used to describe irreversible
Amrita Pritam
Very few 20th-century Indian writers made the private so public—or the public so intimate—as Amrita Pritam. Her genius was in approaching the concept of love without the coyness traditionally demanded of women; the partition of British India into the independent countries of India and Pakistan
Today in History—November 16: The Accidental Discovery of the Hoxne Hoard
Hunt for a hammer, find the largest collection of late Roman gold and silver ever discovered in Britain. That’s what happened to Eric Lawes on this day in 1992. Lawes, a retired utility worker, was using a metal detector he’d received as a gift to search his farmer friend’s field in Hoxne, Suffolk,