The MTPO continues the work of the Mark Twain Papers by editing and publishing critical editions of Twain's completed works, papers, and other writings through the University of California Press. These publications are released both in print and ebook form. These publications, as well as the MTPO itself, have received numerous accolades from both academic and non-academic sources for both the online project itself and the numerous critical editions—such accolades are listed on the site. Additionally, the MTPO submits itself to peer review in order to maintain the standards on electronic texts set by the Committee on Scholarly Editions (CSE), the Modern Languages Association (MLA), and the University of California Academic Senate. The site also contains extensive documentation on its adherence to TEI standards of encoding.

The Project has received several awards for the critical editions released, most notably the 1993–94 Modern Languages Association Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition (for the critical edition of Roughing It) and the Morton N. Cohen Award for Distinguished Edition of Letters (for the edition called Mark Twain's Letters, first published in 1988). While the list of accolades on the site is extensive and impressive, they are almost entirely focused on the printed materials released through the project, and do not make much of a mention of the digital archive itself, suggesting that the project's archival work is secondary to a focus on publications.

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Author: Shaun Macpherson
Word Count: 232

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