The Micropædia was meant for quick fact-checking and as a guide to the Macropædia; readers are advised to study the Propædia outline to understand a subject's context and to find more detailed articles.

In part, it was conceived in reaction to the French Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (published 1751–1772), which had been inspired by Chambers's Cyclopaedia (first edition 1728).

[18] Thus, the 11th edition is "dedicated by Permission to His Majesty George the Fifth, King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, and to William Howard Taft, President of the United States of America.

[12] The Outline can also be used as a study guide, as it puts subjects in their proper perspective and suggests a series of Britannica articles for the student wishing to learn a topic in depth.

[63][needs update] Users would be able to send a question via text message, and AskMeNow would search Britannica's 28,000-article concise encyclopaedia to return an answer to the query.

[72] On 14 September 2010, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced a partnership with mobile phone development company Concentric Sky to launch a series of iPhone products aimed at the K–12 market.

[81] The print version of the Britannica has 4,411 contributors, many eminent in their fields, such as Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, astronomer Carl Sagan, and surgeon Michael DeBakey.

[83] While Britannica's authors have included writers such as Albert Einstein,[84] Marie Curie,[85] and Leon Trotsky,[84] as well as notable independent encyclopaedists such as Isaac Asimov,[86] some have been criticized for lack of expertise.

In 1911, the historian George L. Burr wrote: With a temerity almost appalling, [the Britannica contributor, Mr. Philips] ranges over nearly the whole field of European history, political, social, ecclesiastical...

[88] Among his predecessors as editors-in-chief were Hugh Chisholm (1902–1924), James Louis Garvin (1926–1932), Franklin Henry Hooper (1932–1938),[89] Walter Yust (1938–1960), Harry Ashmore (1960–1963), Warren E. Preece (1964–1968, 1969–1975), Sir William Haley (1968–1969), Philip W. Goetz (1979–1991),[18] and Robert McHenry (1992–1997).

[95] Roughly half of these advisors have since died, including some of the Outline's chief architects – Rene Dubos (d. 1982), Loren Eiseley (d. 1977), Harold D. Lasswell (d. 1978), Mark Van Doren (d. 1972), Peter Ritchie Calder (d. 1982) and Mortimer J. Adler (d. 2001).

Cauz has been pursuing alliances with other companies and extending the Britannica brand to new educational and reference products, continuing the strategy pioneered by former CEO Elkan Harrison Powell in the mid-1930s.

Krishnan brought a varied perspective to the role based on several high-level positions in digital media, including RELX (formerly known as Reed Elsevier, and one of the constituents of the FTSE 100 Index) and Rodale, in which he was responsible for "driving business and cultural transformation and accelerating growth".

[104] Taking the reins of the company as it was preparing to mark its 250th anniversary and define the next phase of its digital strategy for consumers and K–12 schools, Krishnan launched a series of new initiatives in his first year.

Its purpose, the company said, was to "provide trusted, verified information" in conjunction with search results that were thought to be increasingly unreliable in the era of misinformation and "fake news."

[113] In rapidly changing fields such as science, technology, politics, culture and modern history, the Britannica has struggled to stay up to date, a problem first analysed systematically by its former editor Walter Yust.

[18] For the quantitative analysis, ten articles were selected at random—circumcision, Charles Drew, Galileo, Philip Glass, heart disease, IQ, panda bear, sexual harassment, Shroud of Turin and Uzbekistan—and letter grades of A–D or F were awarded in four categories: coverage, accuracy, clarity, and recency.

[119] Encarta contained 66,000 articles, a user-friendly Visual Browser, interactive maps, math, language, and homework tools, a US and UK dictionary, and a youth edition.

[122][123][124] The key differences between the two lie in accessibility; the model of participation they bring to an encyclopedic project; their respective style sheets and editorial policies; relative ages; the number of subjects treated; the number of languages in which articles are written and made available; and their underlying economic models: unlike Britannica, Wikipedia is not-for-profit, does not carry advertising on its site, and is not connected with traditional profit- and contract-based publishing distribution networks.

[126] In 2005, the journal Nature chose articles from both websites in a wide range of science topics and sent them to what it called "relevant" field experts for peer review.

[135] References to the Britannica can be found throughout English literature, most notably in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Red-Headed League".

More recently, A. J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire magazine, read the entire 2002 version of the 15th edition, describing his experiences in the well-received 2004 book The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World.

[138] On 15 July 2009, Encyclopædia Britannica was awarded a spot as one of "Top Ten Superbrands in the UK" by a panel of more than 2,000 independent reviewers, as reported by the BBC.

[12] The bulk of the 15th edition of the Britannica is devoted to geography (26% of the Macropædia), biography (14%), biology and medicine (11%), literature (7%), physics and astronomy (6%), religion (5%), art (4%), Western philosophy (4%), and law (3%).

The initial 15th edition (1974–1985) was faulted for having reduced or eliminated coverage of children's literature, military decorations, and the French poet Joachim du Bellay; editorial mistakes were also alleged, such as inconsistent sorting of Japanese biographies.

When American physicist Harvey Einbinder detailed its failings in his 1964 book, The Myth of the Britannica,[97] the encyclopaedia was provoked to produce the 15th edition, which required 10 years of work.

[145][146] Writing about the 3rd edition (1788–1797), Britannica's chief editor George Gleig observed that "perfection seems to be incompatible with the nature of works constructed on such a plan and embracing such a variety of subjects.

"[148] The sentiment of the 2006 statement was also reflected in the introduction to the first edition of the Britannica, written by its original editor William Smellie:[149] With regard to errors in general, whether falling under the denomination of mental, typographical or accidental, we are conscious of being able to point out a greater number than any critic whatever.

3 The 9th edition featured articles by notables of the day, such as James Clerk Maxwell on electricity and magnetism, and William Thomson (who became Lord Kelvin) on heat.

[155] The 15th edition (introduced as "Britannica 3") was published in three parts: a 10-volume Micropædia (which contained short articles and served as an index), a 19-volume Macropædia, plus the Propædia (see text).