Oxford University Press have said that they have no current plans to produce new print editions of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Juliet Evans, press representative of the OED, confirmed that work has begun on the next edition. This massive undertaking will be the first-ever revision of the entire work and is likely to take at least a decade.
A combination of the large amount of time required to revise the dictionary and the popularity of its online form have contributed to the University Press’s decision not to publish a new printed version in the near future.
Dr. Charlotte Brewer, a fellow of Hertford College, and expert on the OED, confirmed: “They started in 2000 in the middle of the alphabet with ‘M’, and after eight years they have reached part-way through the letter ‘Q’ – so it would be a bit premature to print just this slice of the alphabet.”
Extensive investment in OED online means that new additions and re-writings of the text are published immediately on the internet. Dr. Brewer argued that the OED’s expansion on the web “has immeasurably enriched the variety of data it deals with, especially since many historical texts are now available in this form.”
However the online updates have come under some criticism. Evans said, “This vast quantity of material has made life more complicated for OED, since it has enormously expanded their work-load – and new resources keep on coming online.”
Evans commented that, “A new print edition is hardly feasible until we have finished revising the text, which will take at least ten more years. However, we will consider any form of publication, including print, which will meet readers’ needs at the time.”
Dr. Brewer added, “There are lots of advantages to consulting OED online, since it is much quicker to look up a series of words, to cross-refer between words, and to interrogate the contents of the dictionary analytically.”
Since March 2000 there have been 33 quartely releases of new and revised material.
OUP also publishes the full OED on CD-ROM, and offers many other dictionaries of English in print and electronic forms, including the Shorter and Concise OEDs, the Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary.
The dictionary has been in print continuously since its first publication in 1888. The current edition (first published in 20 volumes in 1989) continues to sell well.
