Oxford University Press: Annual report of the Delegates, 2005/2006

Contents (printed page numbering)

Introduction by Andrew Malcolm
03 Foreword by the Vice-Chancellor
04 Report of the Secretary to the Delegates
Geographic Reports:
06 UK
08 Europe
09 USA
10 International
Publishing Reports:
12 Scholarly and Professional
14 Journals
15 Reference
16 Trade
17 Higher Education
18 Schools
20 English Language Teaching
22 Music
23 OUP Delegates, Finance and Strategy Committees
Financial Reports:
24 Preamble
25 Abstracts of the Combined Balance Sheet of the Trading Operations as at 31/3/2006 (+2005) plus the year's Combined Results
26 Abstract of the Statement of Recognized Gains and Losses of the Trading Operations for the year ended 31/3/2006 (+2005)
27 Abstract the Combined Balance Sheet of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund as at 31/3/2006 (+2005)
28 Abstract of the Combined Statement of Financial Activities of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund for the year to 31/3/2006 (+2005)
29-33 List of prizes awarded during 2005/06 (not transcribed)
34-55 List of scholarly and professional books published during 2005/06 (not transcribed)

Homily on inside of front cover, repeated on back cover: Oxford University Press is a Department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Am I wrong to detect this year, amid the usual attempted justifications of OUP's illegal tax exemption, a bizarre new defensive line being tried?

As usual, we have the overworked homily above suggesting that educational and scholarly book-publishing is in itself a charitable purpose (in which case so it is too for all of OUP's commercial rivals, both in the UK and abroad - see The Surprising Truth...) Then, set against this insinuated holiness, year-by-year the whole report increasingly is presented and reads like that of a multi-national conglomerate, all of whose divisions are under constant pressure to 'outperform the market', 'grow market share', and 'double-digitally improve' on their previous year's figures. Note too the pride that is taken in the buying up around the world of 'suitable acquisition targets' (i.e. Topsy's tax-liable competitors - just four gobbled this year, including, doubtless significantly, US law publisher Oceana).

Next we have OUP's lately-discovered generosity. See how in recent years its "donations to the university" have ever-so-cunningly been redrafted as "transfers to the rest of the university", while in a blackmail move last year the university publicly admitted that it now actually relies on the Press's profits for its solvency. Once again OUP's promised transfer of over £53 million over the next two years is paraded as though it somehow confers charitable status, when in fact of course it cuts no legal ice whatever, and directly contradicts Oxford's own 1970 Waldock Report, which concludes:

"The Press's high reputation in publishing circles and throughout the learned world depends not only on its own exceptional performance but also on the knowledge that, as an independent non-profit-distributing enterprise, it is free from domination by commercial considerations. The loss of that reputation might indeed be a serious matter, and if it came to be thought that the University regarded the OUP as a regular means of making money for itself, irreparable harm might be done."

We have also had the peculiarly uneducated having-and-eating claim that the university press is 'integral' to its university, a suggestion made in the wake of OUP's loss of charitable status in India. There, after a 25-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled against OUP's tax-exemption, not on the grounds that its publishing operations are obviously commercial and not discernibly different from its tax-liable competitors', but because its educational parent-cum-beneficiary is an English university, not an Indian one.

Now, in OUP's latest spiel I hear yet another unlikely lawyers' defence being aired in anticipation of this same reasoning's application to its other endangered branches - USA, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and so forth. Complete with passing unemployment threat, John Hood states:

"The Press is an extremely significant flag-bearer for the University: with its 4,700 staff worldwide, it is in many countries the physical presence of the University."

So now the argument is apparently to go: "OUP(USA) Inc (for example) is Oxford University in New York. And perhaps in Delaware." Oh yes, for sure that will fool the soft-touch IRS attorneys. In recent years we have seen the custodian of our language's great dictionary in surprising difficulty with words like "commitment", "encouragement", "list", "integral" and "donation". Now it seems to be having trouble with the very word "university", which its own shorter volume defines as:

"The whole body of teachers and students pursuing, at a particular place, (my italics) the higher branches of learning."

"Where is the university?" was a question famously asked by an imaginary foreigner visiting Oxford in Gilbert Ryle's classic 1949 text The Concept of Mind. In my police-interrupted Borders talk of January 2003, I myself attempted its re-examination. Judging from John Hood's idiotic new characterisation, this question's answer can now only be: "Up its own corrupt ars humana." In which case, the next that must arise is: How long before the rest of the world ceases its cringeing dalliance up there with it?

[and the heading, again:] '...a commitment to the dissemination of the highest quality scholarly and educational materials, and a commitment to the values of the rest of the University...'

2005/06 was another very good year for the Press, with a strong financial result that reflected high quality and innovative publishing in every part of the business.

The Press's mission is to further the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. It fulfils this objective by publishing across a remarkable range: scholarly, learned journals, legal, medical, academic trade, dictionaries, non-lexical reference, music, higher education, primary and secondary schools, and ELT (English Language Teaching). What all these activities share is a commitment to the dissemination of the highest quality scholarly and educational materials, and a commitment to the values of the rest of the University. The Press is also an extremely significant flag-bearer for the University: with its 4,700 staff worldwide, it is in many countries the physical presence of the University.

The financial contribution made by the Press continues to be important to the finances of the University as a whole. It enables us to support research and scholarship in ways that would otherwise be extremely difficult: the purchase of the Radcliffe Infirmary site, the expansion of the Clarendon Fund, and the creation of the John Fell OUP Research Fund are some of the most obvious examples. In 2005/06 the regular annual transfer was £24.7 million, with a special transfer of £25 million, and an in-kind contribution of £700,000.

In the Delegacy Oliver Taplin retired as Classics Delegate after a ten-year stint in which he supported our publishing not only in classics but also in drama, poetry, and comparative literature with great expertise and unflagging good humour. Andrew Goudie also completed his ten years as Geography Delegate. His calm authority and remarkable versatility have been greatly valued.

Sue Iversen retired after ten years as Delegate for Psychology, and for the last five years of this period she was also Chairman of Finance Committee. With her strong inter-disciplinary focus and ability to anticipate important intellectual trends, her contribution to the Press's psychology and medical publishing has been immense. As Chairman of Finance Committee she was both a wonderful ambassador for the Press and a highly effective ambassador for the University within the Press. She was succeeded as Chairman by Sir Peter North (who has retired as Law Delegate but remains on the Delegacy by virtue of his Finance Committee role).

The new Delegates are the Reverend Professor John Barton, Professor Ewan McKendrick, Dr Anna Christina Nobre, and Professor Christopher Pelling.

Dr John Hood
Vice-Chancellor
University of Oxford

This was a second year in succession of relatively settled conditions in the economic and political environments in which the Press operates. Headline sales increased by 9.1 per cent from £410.8 million to £448.1 million. These numbers are boosted by currency effects, particularly a strengthening dollar. The underlying sales increase - which strips out currency movements, acquisitions, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography -was 5.4 per cent. This compares with a 4.2 per cent underlying increase in 2004/05, and is slightly ahead of the market. In a continued low inflation environment it is clear that all publishers are finding organic growth difficult to achieve. This figure of 5.4 per cent compares well with the published results of our competitors.

I noted last year that our scholarly book publishing was benefiting from improved funding for university libraries in the USA. This trend continued throughout 2005/06 and was mirrored in excellent sales of scholarly titles in the UK and Europe. At the same time we have continued to publish new monographs into Oxford Scholarship Online, which now has over 1,000 titles in its database and nearly 300 institutions worldwide with access to it. The Press is by some distance the largest publisher of scholarly monographs in the world and it is particularly gratifying that, while the 'death of the monograph' has been heralded for at least twenty years, sales are so buoyant.

The Academic Division in the UK had an extremely good year with strong publishing, driven by a range of important titles described elsewhere in this report, leading to its best rate of sales growth in the last decade. Of equal importance, the commissioning in the year was of the highest quality and the benefit of this will be seen in future years. Our Higher Education department delivered good growth and outperformed a difficult UK market. Law and Medicine, in which we continue to invest heavily, also did very well. As part of our commitment to the widest possible dissemination of our content, we signed a national deal with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's new Reference Online initiative to make all of our leading reference titles available to the public via their local libraries or at home. One commentator in the national press said, 'It's hard to imagine a better excuse for the recent rises in the council tax...'.

The Journals Division had a record year in terms of sales growth which was driven by the acquisition of publishing contracts for several new scholarly society journals including the European Heart Journal (the journal of the European Society of Cardiology); a range of new library consortia deals; and growing secondary rights sales and licensing agreements. We also completed the digitization of the entire Oxford Journals archive which will make all journals content from Volume 1, Issue I to the end of 1995 available online. Containing over 165 years of research and an estimated 4 million article pages, this will be an invaluable tool for scholars.

OUP USA achieved good sales growth in a year defined by healthy library, wholesale, and online retail markets, and by difficult trade retail and higher education markets. Our Scholarly, Professional, Reference, and Academic/Trade lists all performed well, with perhaps the highlight of the year being the continuation of our remarkable track record with a fourth Pulitzer Prize for History in the last seven years, this time for Polio by David Oshinsky. In the last two years there has been a major focus on expanding the reach of our publishing into hitherto untapped markets by improving income from sales of subsidiary rights on US titles, and we saw excellent growth during 2005/06. Indeed, sales of subsidiary rights across the Press have grown remarkably in recent years to the point where they now represent an important method of content dissemination and provide a good contribution to our overall financial result.

The International Division maintained its very impressive record with a seventh successive year of growth ahead of the market. In sales terms it is now the largest division within the Press. Canada, China, India, Kenya, Mexico, and Tanzania all had good sales years, but particular mention should be made of Southern Africa which achieved outstanding sales growth and produced the largest surplus ever recorded by a branch of the division. Local schools publishing and dictionaries in every branch, and higher education titles in selected markets, are driving this growth. Our scholarly publishing in India and Pakistan continues to produce the pre-eminent titles on South Asian history, politics, economics, and literature.

Spending in the UK schoolbooks market declined in 2005 from the previous year and in some areas fell below the levels recorded in 2003 (the year of the school funding 'crisis'). The UK Education Division gained market share in both the primary and secondary sectors, and overall did well to achieve sales growth in such difficult conditions. Export sales performed beyond expectations. We celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Oxford Reading Tree, the leading primary reading scheme in the UK, which has proved to be one of the most durable educational copyrights ever published in this country.

The Press is the largest publisher in the world of British English ELT materials, a market that has become extremely competitive in recent years as in many countries much of the teaching of English has moved into state school curricula. in the all-important European market our ELT division delivered strong sales growth ahead of the market, with Central and Eastern Europe in particular making major gains. The Asian market had another good year with a strong performance from Korea; the Middle East saw gains in market share; and in Latin America Brazil generated substantial growth. This year we published the 7th edition of our best-selling book: the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. First published in 1948, it has sold at a rate of one copy every sixty seconds since then. With total sales of over 30 million copies, it is one of the best selling books of all time.

OUP Espana had a good year despite the continued uncertainty over the timing of the forthcoming educational reform and, in some regions, the move away from the current model of parental purchase to centralized buying by schools. We maintained our market leadership in the most important ELT market in the world; grew market share in Spanish pre-primary and secondary; and made great advances in our joint venture with Planeta, which publishes Spanish graded readers for the children's market.

Last year I pointed out that the Press's surplus for 2004/05 was substantially inflated by the contribution from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The post-tax surplus for 2005/06 was £70.5 million compared to £74.7 million in 2004/05. A better measure of the consistency of year-on-year performance of the business is to look at the result before interest, other income, and funded projects, which excludes items of income and expenditure which tend to be non-recurring or hard to regulate such as adjustments for foreign exchange. If we adjust this line for the effects of the ODNB and for acquisitions, we arrive at a figure of £79.5 million in 2005/06 compared to £77.5 million in 2004/05. The result has been underpinned by strong cash generation with over 100 percent of the surplus converted into cash.

The Press made four acquisitions during the year. In Australia we purchased the Horwitz primary schoolbook list which gives us greater scale in the important primary market and a stronger presence in New South Wales. The Academic Division acquired Bellamy and Child, EC Law of Competition, one of the seminal law copyrights in the market. The UK Education Division acquired the Read, Write Inc list which adopts a synthetic phonics approach to primary literacy teaching, an approach that is of increasing importance following the conclusions of the government's Rose Review. These three acquisitions follow the well-established model of tuck-in deals that complement the Press's existing activities. The fourth purchase - that of the Oceana law list in the USA - falls into a different category. We have been strikingly successful in our law publishing in the UK through focusing on the highest quality authors and titles, and believe that we can develop from that base into the North American law market: Oceana will be the platform for that expansion. We shall continue to look for suitable acquisition targets provided that they meet our stringent criteria both in terms of quality and nature of the publishing and that they further the University's objectives.

2005/06 was the first year of a substantially enhanced programme of investment in publishing overheads designed to deliver sustainable sales growth ahead of the market. This investment will continue in 2006/07 and will inevitably have an impact on the surplus that we generate in the short term. This investment is needed because our markets are becoming more demanding and our competitors more aggressive. We have to meet these competitive pressures and at the same time ensure that everything we publish meets the high standards that are synonymous with the Oxford name. The Press continues to provide substantial and increasing financial transfers to the rest of the University. In the last 10 years transfers have exceeded £300 million. Transfers are calculated on the combined results of the Trading Operations and the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund, and are set out here for the last six years. The guaranteed minimum annual transfer was initially set at £9 million in 1999 and was increased to £12 million in 2003. Strong financial performance has resulted in this minimum amount being exceeded every year since 1999.

Chart showing transfers to the rest of the university, 2001/2-2006/7

The Press is part of the way through a further special transfer that will assist the University with major capital projects; expand the existing programme of Clarendon scholarships for overseas postgraduate students who would not otherwise be able to attend the University; and establish a research development fund that has been named the John Fell OUP Research Fund. It would be difficult to identify areas more appropriate for Press transfers. The first £25 million was transferred as a special contribution in March 2006. The regular annual subvention for 2006/07, based on this year's results, will be £26.6 million.

Dr Henry Reece
Secretary to the Delegates and Chief Executive
Oxford University Press

Geographic Report: UK

[Return to Contents]

THE UK ACADEMIC DIVISION PERFORMED well in a generally tough UK market. There has been strong growth in a number of publishing areas, with higher education (HE), medicine, and academic titles doing particularly well. The high quality of our academic publishing has supported very good growth across the academic Library Supply market, and customers in this market are now showing increased interest in electronic products. The HE market remains tough especially for high street and campus retailers: there has been a marked increase in the sales of second-hand textbooks, and we have seen high discounting from the major academic booksellers during the 'Back to University' sales period. A focus will now be on supporting sell-through to students of adopted and recommended texts during this season.

The division's online sales have been strong. A national deal supporting the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's (MLA) new Reference Online initiative will make all of OUP's important reference titles - OED, ODNB, The Grove Dictionaries of Music and Art, and Oxford Reference Online - available to the public through their local libraries or at home. We have also seen a strong market for online products within the HE sector which has been reflected in renewals of JISC subscriptions.

Cherie Booth QC and Dan Squires at the launch of their
co-authored book The Negligence Liability of Public
Authorities, at Lincoln's Inn, London, February 2006
[Cunning, what? How to buy off all the lawyers who might
one day mount a challenge: publish 'em! - A. M.]

OUP was voted 'Academic Publisher of the Year' and 'Distributor of the Year' by the Academic, Professional and Specialist Booksellers Group for 2005 and 2006.

In schools, the market continued to decline. The spend recorded through the Educational Publishers Council was down 5 per cent at primary level and down 9 per cent in the secondary sector. Oxford's publishing sold relatively well and we outperformed both markets. The strongest results were seen in Key Stage 1 literacy, secondary geography, and our atlas and dictionary lists.

A key development in the primary market was the publication of the Rose Review in March 2006. This places increased emphasis on synthetic phonics in the early teaching of reading. OUP is well positioned to support this development, with a new phonics strand for the Oxford Reading Tree, Songbirds, and through its recent acquisition of the Read, Write Inc list.

Secondary science and maths departments spent less on materials in 2005 as they anticipated the resources required to equip students and teachers for new GCSEs in 2006. We are expecting these sectors to be relatively buoyant in the coming months and have published major new schemes for the new examinations.

Additional funding in the form of Electronic Learning Credits for Curriculum Online continued to be injected into English primary and secondary schools. This money is ring-fenced for them to spend on interactive electronic content for the classroom and computer suites. Levels of spending were, however, lower than in previous years and we saw a decline in sales of electronic product to schools for the first time in four years.

For our children's list the traditional high street remained very competitive, with key customers reducing their ranges and demanding larger marketing contributions for major titles. Non-traditional outlets such as supermarkets and school book fairs provided some opportunities. Overall our trade lists maintained their presence across these channels.

SALES INTO EUROPE FROM THE UK ACADEMIC DIVISION HAVE been strong. Heavy returns from the German wholesaler Libri have been more than offset by year-on-year increases from the academic, reference, law and higher education lists. Sales have increased to a number of European library suppliers, and a greater focus on HE has resulted in good textbook sales, particularly in Benelux, Norway, and Denmark. The medical frontlist has struggled due to fewer higher-priced professional titles this year, although the backlist has performed well. Benelux, Southern and Eastern Europe have all shown good growth and a new direct trading relationship with Amazon.de in Germany has started very positively.

In Spain there was a relatively low level of textbook change, particularly in the secondary and upper-secondary markets. However, Oxford Educacion, our Spanish-language schools publishing business, continued to grow in nearly all subject areas, while ELT maintained its large market share. There were substantial increases in sales of non-textbook product lines such as graded readers and holiday books in ELT, and Spanish young learners' literature in Oxford Educacion.

The ELT division as a whole enjoyed strong sales throughout Europe, ahead of the market, and continued to build upon its leading position in the face of increasingly fierce competition from international and regional publishers. Overall growth was strong with material gains being made in market share. This encouraging performance was led by Central and Eastern Europe, with growth in Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia all in double digits. At the end of 2005 we celebrated our 10th year at the forefront of the ELT market in Poland. Benelux, Switzerland, Portugal, and Germany also made significant contributions to the overall result. A significant risk across the region is the ongoing prospect of greater government regulation of school book markets.

2005/06 WAS A YEAR OF MIXED ECONOMIC SIGNALS IN the US market. Despite rising energy costs, a devastating Gulf hurricane season, and the growth of the used book market, institutional and consumer spending rose slightly during the period, and we registered increases in many of the markets in which we compete for sales. Sales channels that exhibited particularly strong growth included library, wholesale, online retail, and export; meanwhile, the trade retail and higher education sales channels faced a more challenging set of circumstances.

Despite a slightly shrinking library market for print reference, we once again benefited from our strong portfolio of online reference products, which continues to sustain double-digit year-on-year growth. We also witnessed early success from the changes to our selling model for Oxford Scholarship Online, as we began to convert sales from a subscription basis to a perpetual access model.

Many of our wholesale customers experienced good growth, particularly those which service libraries. Signs continue to point to a stable, or even growing library channel and the strength of our academic publishing programme is benefiting from this trend.

Online retail sites experienced strong growth. Amazon remains our biggest customer in this channel and grew substantially. We are also beginning to see significant sales among an emerging group of Amazon Marketplace sellers, all of whom utilize the Amazon technology for the front-end customer experience, but buy directly from us. Sales to this group of customers more than doubled this year. Our own website continues to play a pivotal role in our online sales too and we were pleased to see an excellent increase in these direct-to-consumer sales.

The US ESL (English as a Second Language) group built a strong and focused sales and marketing team in order to increase market share and revenue from our new materials for students in US secondary schools, colleges, and adult basic education programmes. Our authors and the New York publishing team are working closely with the sales force to expand our presence in this important market.

THERE WERE FEWER POLITICAL UPHEAVALS OR NATURAL disasters in the International Division branch territories than in previous years - the earthquake in Pakistan being a notable exception. In a relatively stable environment most international currencies strengthened against the British pound and this, combined with good focus, clear publishing strategies, and stronger sales and marketing teams around the world, allowed the International Division to achieve its best result ever. It broke through the £100 million barrier in February 2006, and maintained its seven-year record of achieving annual sales growth in excess of 7 per cent.

OUP China managed to achieve reasonable sales growth in a declining Hong Kong schools market. It recaptured a respectable share of the important ELT market in Hong Kong with the successful launch of a major new primary programme called Magic. Two new CLT (Chinese Language Teaching) programmes for junior secondary level captured over 65 per cent market share.

Meanwhile, the journals division made headway with the establishment of a new office in Beijing, and it held its first Chinese library meeting in August. Oxford Journals' growing presence resulted in successful sales of the Biomedical Collection to Chinese medical universities in 2005, as well as a trial period of the Full Online Collection, which was taken up by all major Chinese universities.

OUP Southern Africa seriously challenged OUP China's traditional position as the largest branch, with sales only slightly below China's. The higher education, trade, and schools divisions all exceeded budgets. Schools sales in particular were outstanding, with significant market share gains achieved as the new curriculum continued to be implemented. The branch is now being positioned as a major local educational publisher, with plans to enter the school markets in Namibia and Botswana.

OUP India produced another very good result and has now achieved double-digit sales growth for more than 10 years in succession. A new school curriculum created the opportunity to launch a wide range of schoolbooks which included programmes in ELT, maths, environmental education, geography, and for the first time science. All are faring well in the market. The recently introduced higher education list continued to flourish with 20 new core titles in engineering, business, and computer studies. The academic list continues to grow in size and stature.

The major event for OUP Australia was the purchase of an elementary maths and literacy list from Horwitz Education. Horwitz maths books enjoy over 50 per cent market share in New South Wales and this acquisition has given the branch much needed scale in the primary market. The trade and school markets remain stagnant in Australia but the domestic higher education list continued to grow.

In Canada there was a welcome recovery in the schools market and core textbooks - both new and backlist - sold well above expectations. The higher education list continued to grow and the branch outperformed the market. ESL (English as a Second language) benefited from a new arrangement with a Quebec-based partner which is tapping into the fairly inaccessible Francophone school market. Trade sales dropped alarmingly in this notoriously difficult market which is dominated by one chain. This led to the decision to downsize the trade division and reallocate resources to educational publishing.

After a number of years of steady growth, the branch in Malaysia faced various challenges and school sales in particular were sluggish. There was pleasing growth in sales of imported higher education titles - the result of aggressive sales and marketing initiatives. New strategies and initiatives along with a realignment of priorities are underway in this market, fuelled by the end of curriculum implementation and a need to grow our business by means other than winning textbook tenders.

It was a very good year for OUP Mexico. ELT sales grew impressively as we took market share from our competitors. The local law list performed well, and we received a notable order for imported law titles from the Supreme Court. Much investment was put into new school texts for the new curriculum, although the government is still deciding just when to launch the new syllabus. All these factors combined to produce a very good sales result.

In East Africa both the Kenyan and Tanzanian Branches had outstanding years on the back of curriculum revision and donor funding. It is important to note that, although money was being provided to support the new curriculum, in both countries OUP outperformed the competition by doing better publishing, getting more books on the recommended lists, and out-selling everyone else. We dominate the schools market in these countries.

While our academic publishing in Pakistan is highly regarded, the vast majority of our sales in the country come from the schools sector. So when two of the three provinces in Pakistan decided to change the start of the school year from April to September, sales were pushed from one financial year to the next. This was the year of famine. Next year we anticipate a feast as new school series are adopted across the country.

ELT's continued improving coverage across the Middle East bore fruit with healthy sales growth in the region. New investment in both product development and front line sales is earmarked to sustain future sales growth and market share gains.

In Latin America OUP Brazil was the star performer on the back of an excellent local sales performance and some favourable macro-economic factors.

In Korea, ELT experienced excellent sales growth under strong local leadership and participated in celebrating the 50th anniversary of our long-time distribution partner, E Public, formerly known as Panmun Books. Our performance in Southeast Asia was also very good, in spite of piracy issues. In Vietnam, our global bestseller for primary schools, Let's Go, 2/e, received approval from the Ministry of Education and sales were strong across the board. Our results in Japan were challenged by weakness in our distribution channels.

OUR TWO MAIN CENTRES FOR Scholarly and Professional publishing are in the UK and the USA. There are also well-regarded scholarly lists in OUP India and OUP Pakistan.

Scholarly highlights included Martin Haspelmath et al., World Atlas of Language Structures; the six-volume Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century now (sic) in the Bodleian Library; a complete edition of Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets, edited by Roger Lonsdale; and a new title in the Bird Families of the World series, the late Janet Kear's Ducks, Geese, and Swans. In the Oxford Handbooks series we published Theological Ethics, Contemporary Philosophy, Public Management, and Biblical Studies, and launched the 10-volume Oxford Handbooks in Political Science series with politics Contextual Political Analysis politics, (sic) edited by Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly.

Other high-profile and critically acclaimed titles included Bruno Latour's Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies, Reassembling the Social; Jytte Klausen's Islamic Challenge; the first volume of John Haffenden's biography of William Empson - winner of the Association of American Publisher's Award for Biography and Autobiography; Luke Hodgkin's History of Mathematics; Brian Hebblethwaite's In Defence of Christianity; and Michael Prestwich's Plantagenet England in the New Oxford History of England series. Two Oxford books shared the Women's History Network's Book Prize 2005: J. L. Laynesmith's Last Medieval Queens, and Elizabeth Buettner's Empire Families.

Highlights in the US scholarly publishing programme included publication of Steven Deyle's Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life; Jeff Manza' and Christopher Uggen's study of the role of felon disenfranchisement in American democracy, Locked Out; Eiichiro Azuma's multiple award-winning Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America; Lindz Ben-Zvi's much-anticipated biography, Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times; Conquest by Law. How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands, a valuable work of revisionist legal history by Lindsay G. Robertson; two long-awaited anthologies in the brain sciences, Yosef Grodzinsky and Katrin Amunts' Broca's Region, and Edward A. Wasserman and Thomas R. Zentall's Comparative Cognition: Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence; and the appearance of a landmark volume, Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders by Dwight L. Evans et al.

Several US books won major awards. Robert R. Bianchi's Guests of God - Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World was awarded the 2005 Albert Hourani Prize, awarded annually by the Middle Eastern Studies Association, that organization's most coveted prize. Barbara Rogoff's The Cultural Nature of Human Development received the William James Award from Division 1 of the American Psychological Association, also a top honour. Caroline Castiglione's Patrons and Adversaries: Nobles and Villagers in Italian Politics, 1640-1760, won the American Historical Association's Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize. Barbara Diefendorf's From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris won the J. Russell Major Prize of the American Historical Association.

Oxford Scholarship Online passed the 1,000-title milestone during the year, with over 1,100 titles now live on the site. The number of institutions worldwide with access to OSO is fast approaching 300, representing a truly heterogeneous blend of educational institutions. OSO was described in The Chronicle of Higher Education as 'a hit on campus' and in artsjournal.com as 'a godsend for cash-strapped university libraries'.

In Law we launched our first practitioner law journal, The Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, alongside new works on banking and financial law including Blair and Walker, Financial Services Law. Blackstone's Police Manuals Online represented an important extension of our offering for the police promotion examinations. International law publishing developed with a major reference work on the International Court of justice, and Matsushita, Schoenbaum and Mavroidis' WTO Law Practice and Policy was awarded the American Society of International Law's Certificate of Merit. Joshua Getzler's History of Water Rights at Common Law was awarded the Peter Birks memorial book prize by the Society of Legal Scholars and Nicola Lacey's A Life of HLA Hart was shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize.

Medical Books published ten new pocket-sized Oxford Handbooks, and new Oxford Textbooks in Palliative Care for Children and Psychotherapy. Several series were launched: Oxford Specialist Handbooks, Oxford Desk References, Oxford Care Manuals, and 'Emergencies in...'An important milestone was celebrated - the 21st birthday of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine which has sold over one million copies. OUP won the prestigious British Psychological Society Book Award for the fifth time in six years with Melvyn A. Goodale and A. David Milner, Sight Unseen, and Rachel Stanworth's Recognizing Spiritual Needs in People who are Dying won first prize in the Medical Journalists' Association competition. In the USA, Medical highlights included a trio of scientifically important titles: Jeremy D. Schmahmann's Fiber Pathways of the Brain, which was over a decade in the making; Gerd Kempermann's Adult Neurogenesis: Stem Cells Grid Neuroncil Development in the Adult Brain; and Diego F. Wyszynski's Neural Tube Defects, which offers definitive coverage of a devastating genetic disorder. The year also saw the publication of several new editions of stalwart titles. Finally, the list of Graywind books in cognitive behavioural therapy acquired last year (and renamed 'Treatments That Work') is now fully integrated into our programme and a major springboard for the expansion of our applied publishing in psychology.

A major new Handbook series was launched successfully in India with Handbooks on Poverty, Energy and Environment, Human Rights, Media, and Urbanization in India. The Illustrated History of the Sikhs was launched by the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh. Two volumes on the Tiger by Valmik Thapar, The Last Tiger and Tiger - the Ultimate Guide, received good reviews. Empires of the Mind by Rimi G. Chatterjee describes the history of Oxford University Press during the Raj.

In Pakistan M. A. Jinnah: Views and Reviews, edited by M. R. Kazimi, is a collection of articles written by the most eminent authorities on South Asian history, and focuses on the life and career of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Jihad, Hindutva, and the Taliban: South Asia at the Crossroads by Iftikhar Malik explores significant developments in recent years that have transformed the South Asian political contours.

THE JOURNALS DIVISION NOW HAS OFFICES in the UK (Oxford), USA (Cary, Bethesda), Japan (Tokyo), and China (Beijing), and publishes over 180 journals covering the life sciences, mathematics and physical sciences, medicine, social sciences, humanities, and law.

2005 was a record year, with a total sales increase well ahead of the market, and many new library consortia deals signed including those in the Netherlands, India, Russia, South Africa, and the USA. We also saw increasing non-subscription revenue growth from secondary rights sales, licensing agreements, and special sales. This strong sales growth was a driven by the acquisition of several new journals including the prestigious European Heart Journal, published on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology.

The journals market remains highly competitive, but we continue to acquire further new titles. New for 2006 include Europace; Journal of International Property Law and Practice; DNA Research; Integrative and Comparative Biology; Briefings in Bioinformatics; Briefings in Functional Genomics and Proteomics; Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) ; and CESifo Economic Studies.

Over the course of 2005 we led the way with active experimentation on open access business models. This included making Nucleic Acids Research fully open access in January 2005, and launching Oxford Open, which gives authors from over 40 journals a choice about paying for their articles to be made freely available immediately on publication of the online version.

2006 sees the culmination of a major project to digitize the entire Oxford journals archive. This will make all journal content from Volume 1 Issue 1 to the end of 1995 available online. The Archive was officially launched in April 2006, and contains over 165 years of research, and an estimated 4 million article pages. This unique, historical collection is already proving very popular with libraries around the world.

In a digital era, one of the major challenges faced by publishers and librarians is to ensure that online publications are preserved for future generations. We are therefore arranging for duplicate copies of our online archives to be deposited with independent online archives around the world, for example those being established by the British and Dutch National Libraries.

THE BESTSELLING NEW DICTIONARY in the UK was the revised edition of the top-of-the range Oxford Dictionary of English bristling with all the latest approved entrants to the English lexicon and enabled with free online access, an offer taken up widely by customers.

The new edition of the Oxford-Duden German Dictionary joined its Spanish sibling in an attractive new two-colour design. A landmark in English-Polish lexicography was the launch of the two-volume OxfordPWN English-Polish Polish-English Dictionary, set to become the definitive translation authority for these two languages, between which there is increasing interchange. The Dictionary was recognized with the award of the Polish business community's European Medal. At the Frankfurt Book Fair, OUP and FLTRP of Beijing announced their partnership in a major new English and Chinese Dictionary project which will lead to many new bilingual print and electronic products. This new project has been made possible partly by a new web-based dictionary writing system that enables members of the team to work from any location.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary Department issued the first edition of the Concise Canadian Oxford Dictionary and well as the Oxford Canadian Dictionary of Current English.

Reflecting the academic and scholarly lexical research work done by the two Dictionary Centres in Canberra and Wellington, OUP Australia and New Zealand published two successful monographs - Diggerspeak: The Language of Australians at War by Amanda Laugesen and A Dictionary of Maori Words in New Zealand English edited by John Macalister.

Two classic Oxford reference books were rewritten and re- launched a century after first publication: New Hart's Rules and the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Our Quotations programme saw two key authors, Ned Sherrin and Antony Jay, both return to market with third editions of their signature titles: Humorous Quotations and Political Quotations. In each case, publication allowed us to celebrate 10 years of successful collaboration. The Oxford Companion to the Photograph was published to wide acclaim, and is already available online in Oxford Reference Online.

The reference list in the USA was bolstered by a major new edition of the Oxford Book of American Poetry, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Richard Taruskin's six-volume opus, the Oxford History of Western Music, continues to garner accolades, winning the Association of American Publishers' prestigious R. R. Hawkins award for best scholarly-based book.

Work on the seventh and final volume of the Handbook of New Zealand and Australian Birds, Bootbills to Starlings was completed in 2005. This mammoth publishing venture contains over 9,200 pages covering 957 bird species in Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica.

The Encyclopaedia of Pakistan, edited by Hafeez Malik and Yu. V. Gankovsky, is a unique reference work covering all aspects of Pakistan: its history, politics, foreign affairs, land and people, economy, culture, literature, and arts.

Oxford Paperback Reference continued its busy publishing programme. We added some new titles - A Dictionary of Space Exploration, The Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, and A Dictionary of Animal Behaviour - and new editions in a wide range of subjects including A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Simon Blackburn's A Dictionary of Philosophy, and A Dictionary of Psychology among others.

Oxford Reference Online continues to be refreshed with new copyrights from OUP USA and the Academic Division, and also from further afield, notably OUP Australia and New Zealand. Two new collections were also launched: Western Civilization, a historical resource which will when complete span from ancient times to the twentieth century, and the Literature Collection, which assembles a wide range of Oxford literature companions. In the USA the Oxford Digital Reference Shelf, a collection of stand-alone for-purchase (as opposed to subscription) reference databases, was launched in March and named one of Library Journal's Best Reference Resources for 2005. ODRS continues to build momentum and offers a new model for Oxford to offer electronic content to the institutional community. In addition, we successfully built a new publishing platform and launched our first product on it - the African American Studies Center (AASC) in April 2006.

The Press continues to invest in the first complete revision of the Oxford English Dictionary, on which nearly 70 editorial staff are now engaged. In 2005/06 editing was successfully transferred to a new computing system which provides more effective ways to organize and carry out editing throughout the project. The OED also featured centrally in a BBC TV series, Balderdash and Piffle, which was based on the dictionary's long-established practice of appealing to the public for new evidence of word origins.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also published regular online updates, including coverage of people who died in 2002, published in January 2006. Events, reviews, and awards have continued to underline the ODNB's impact; leading speakers at events included the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Bingham, the UK's senior law lord.

THE TRADE DIVISION IN THE USA HAD A PARTICULARLY STRONG crop of titles this year, most notably Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist, a quirky look at the basic principles of economics by a writer at the Financial Times, and James Patterson's Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v Gore, the latest volume in our landmark series, The Oxford History of the United States. Andrew Bacevich received the 'Especially Notable Book Award' from the Lannan Foundation for The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War.

In the UK, the best-selling trade title was Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton's Fair Trade for All, proposing a radical new solution to the problems of world trade, and pronounced 'insightful and challenging' by Jeffrey Sachs. Other major publications included the second edition of The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells et al, and a new edition of Paradise Lost with an introduction by Philip Pullman.

The trade science list was dominated by the 30th anniversary edition of Richard Dawkins's Selfish Gene and a high-profile collection of essays exploring the influence of Dawkins's ideas and writings: Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think. Other important titles included John Barrow's vArtful Universe Expanded, Susan Blackmore's Conversations on Consciousness, and Andrew Brown's J. D. Bernal: The Sage of Science.

History highlights included Bryan Ward-Perkins's major new interpretation of The Fall of Rome, described as 'a hard-hitting and beautifully written assessment' by the Sunday Telegraph; the lavishly illustrated Eroticism and Art from Alyce Mahon, and John Gittings's Changing Face of China. Frances Harris won the Samuel Pepys Award 2005 for Transformations of Love, and Rana Mitter won the inaugural Times Higher Award 2005 for the Young Academic Author of the Year for A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World.

We also published a biography of Christopher Marlowe by Park Honan, Terry Eagleton's Holy Terror, and a volume on Medieval Philosophy in the New History of Western Philosophy series by Anthony Kenny.

The paperback edition of David Hackett Fischer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington's Crossing spent three weeks on the Boston Globe bestseller list, and made an appearance on the New York Times Extended Bestseller List. Three paperbacks by Bart Ehrman - Lost Christianities, Lost Scriptures and Truth and Fiction in the DaVinci Code - were among our paperback bestsellers in the USA as bookstores prepared for the release of the movie version The DaVinci Code in May.

We published four books in the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative series funded by the Annenberg Foundation. These books are designed for the parents of teenagers suffering from eating disorders, bipolar disorder or depression, schizophrenia, or anxiety disorders and are derived from the acclaimed parent volume, Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders.

Oxford World's Classics included the paperback of M. A. S. Abdel Haleem's translation of The Qur'an, and Joyce Crick's edition of Selected Tales from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, which the TLS pronounced 'a magnificent job... both [Crick] and OUP are to be congratulated'. A strong range of new titles in the Very Short Introductions series included The Crusades, Dead Sea Scrolls, Human Evolution, Buddhist Ethics, Socialism, Renaissance Art, Feminism, and Tragedy.

The major Bible releases this year were the second edition of the Catholic Study Bible, the first and only study Bible available for this constituency, and the Scofield Study Bible English Standard Version, which applies the Scofield study system to one of the most widely used translations in the evangelical community.

HIGHER EDUCATION IS A MAJOR GROWTH area for OUP, with flourishing lists in many of our publishing centres.

In law we published new editions of many of the titles that we acquired from Lexis Nexis, including Smith & Hogan Criminal Law and Smith and Hogan Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, both updated by David Omerod, and McNae's Essential Law for Journalists by Tom Welsh, Walter Greenwood, and David Banks. New editions of Law for Social Workers by Hugh Brayne and Helen Carr and Casebook on Contract Law by Jill Poole were published in two-colour. We also published a new text, cases and materials book: Medical Law by Emily Jackson. HE law publishing is a major activity in our branch in Mexico (in Spanish), and it is becoming increasingly important in Australia, where we appointed a dedicated law publisher.

In the fast-growing area of business and economics we published Contemporary Employment Relations by Steve Williams and Derek Adam-Smith and new editions of Organization Theory by Mary Jo Hatch and Strategic Advertising Management by Larry Percy and Richard Elliot. Business Ethics by Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten won the 2005 Textbook Award of the Association of University Professors of Management. Two business titles published in South Africa performed particularly well - Accounting: GAAP Principles and Operations Management. Meanwhile, PFB Malaysia launched a list for the growing college market in that country. The first four titles (all in Malay) are Principles of Economics, Computer Applications, Business Administration, and Economics from on Islamic Perspective.

On our politics and international relations lists we published two new titles in the The New European Union Series - International Relations and the European Union by Christopher Hill and Michael Smith and The Member States of the European Union by Simon Bulmer and Christian Lequesne, together with new editions of Policy-Making in the European Union by Helen Wallace, William Wallace and Mark A. Pollack.

Science saw the publication of two flagship new editions: Shriver & Atkins, Inorganic Chemistry by Peter Atkins et al and Atkins' Physical Chemistry by Peter Atkins and Julio De Paula. The same authors published a brand new title: Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences.

Highlights from medicine and dentistry include the new edition of Human Physiology by Gillian Pocock and Christopher D. Richards and a new text An Introduction to Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery by David Mitchell.

In the USA we have chosen to focus on growth in selected disciplines, and this year we added three new subject areas: psychology, life science, and chemistry. Signings this year included two titles in music appreciation, a large-enrolment non-majors course in the USA, and the acquisition of a new book by Bart Ehrmann for the Introduction to the Bible course.

In July 2005 we rolled out our first WebCT and BlackBoard courses for adopting instructors. This was followed by the launch of a website dedicated to higher education products and designed for adopting instructors. In February 2006 we introduced a new Custom Publishing programme, which allows instructors to choose their book content from a database of OUP offerings.

The higher education list in India was strengthened with 16 new titles in the core areas of Engineering, Biotechnology, Computer Science, and Business Management.

Two major textbooks were published in Pakistan - Issues in Pakistan's Economy by S. Akbar Zaidi, a main text for postgraduate courses on South Asia's development, economic history and political economy, and Constitutional and Political History of Pakistan by Hamid Khan.

Local HE publishing in Canada continued to expand. The second edition of Principles of Sociology by Lorne Tepperman and James Curtis - a four-colour text featuring a DVD that includes related news stories from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - took OUP Canada's share in the competitive introductory sociology market to 11 per cent. The Canadian branch has been particularly successful at adapting US texts for the Canadian market; it is now working on some Australian texts.

PUBLISHING FOR SCHOOLS CONTINUES TO BE an extremely important area for OUP. It is the core activity of the International Division branches, and there are major programmes in the UK and Spain. While all educational markets are subject to the uneven rhythm of funding availability and curriculum change, the large number of markets in which we operate means that, in general, the risks are more than offset by the opportunities.

In the UK the Oxford Reading Tree continues to be the mainstay of our primary literacy business. It remains the nation's favourite reading scheme and this year celebrated its twentieth anniversary. We relaunched Treetops, which is targeted at the junior years, with a fresh cover style, new stories and a non-fiction range. The non-fiction titles cover the full range of text types identified in the National Literacy Strategy and provide helpful cross-curricular links for teachers. New publishing into Oxford Reading Tree also included a phonics strand, Songbirds, timed to coincide with the Rose Review into the teaching of reading. In January we acquired Read, Write Inc, a whole-school systematic approach to synthetic phonics teaching. These two programmes give OUP a powerful position in the growing phonics market.

Our primary maths list continues to grow. This year saw the publication of a new series, Maths Trackers, to support and inspire Key Stage 2 pupils who have gaps in their mathematical understanding.

In secondary we publish across five main subject areas (maths, science, geography, English, and modern foreign languages). Maths continued to perform well with new supplemental publishing into our market leading Key Stage 3 course, Framework Maths. The highlight of the Science list was the publication in January 2006 of the new GCSE course, 21st Century Science. This programme has been in development for three years including an extensive pilot over the last two years. It is based on a QCA project and developed in partnership with the Nuffield Curriculum Centre, the University of York Science Education Group, and the OCR Awarding Body. 21st Century Science has been extremely well received and is already winning significant adoptions in schools.

For Geography we published two additional differentiated levels into geog. 123, to support Key Stage 3 students working at lower levels, and to stretch the more able. We have published a GCSE English course specifically targeted at, and endorsed by, the Welsh Examination Board, and extended the English list into a drama offering for Key Stage 4.

Modern Foreign Languages had another tough year as schools continue to move away from the subject at GCSE. However, the new edition of our Key Stage 3 course Klasse Neu has allowed us to build market share in German. We completed our A-level suite of publishing with the second part of a Spanish programme, Animo, and now take an impressive 43 per cent of the total Modern Languages A-level spend.

We published electronic components to support all our major courses at both Primary and Secondary levels. These 'blended' resources provide innovative teaching and learning solutions and allow us to benefit from schools' Electronic Learning Credits.

The cartographic team published a new Key Stage 3 Atlas and launched the Oxford Pocket Atlas, an ideal format for Back-to-School sales. The Pocket Atlas has also been adapted for OUP Canada. The key publication in the schools' dictionary range was the Oxford Primary Dictionary, which generated an immediate increase in sales across all channels.

Our Children's Fiction publishing saw strong sales of Geraldine McCaughrean's White Darkness, Alan Snow's Here be Monsters, and new author Julia Golding's Secret of the Sirens. For the first time in a number of years we have published into our Children's non-fiction list. Key titles include a World Cup book Fantastic Football, which has already been translated into eight language, and Stephen Biesty's spectacular cross-section book Greece, for which we have sold translations rights in six countries.

In Spain, Oxford Educacion, our Spanish-language schools publishing list, continued to grow. A highlight was the launch of the Technology series of four textbooks for secondary students.

The Spanish Children's and Young Learners' Readers catalogue under the joint Planeta-Oxford brand enjoyed another successul year, publishing 30 new titles for primary (ages 6 to 11) and 24 new titles for secondary (ages 12 to 14) in the Camaleon and Nautilus series.

Highlights of the International Division's schools publishing include:

CHINA

• The launch of Magic, a major new primary English course
• A new Certificate (senior level) Chinese course
• The launch of two new editions of junior secondary English courses

MALAYSIA

• The publication of three new series in maths and science in English for secondary students
• The award of seven new Ministry of Education tenders in maths, biology, and science
• Rights to publish the A-level examination papers for 2005 to 2007

AUSTRALIA

• Four levels of texts plus accompanying workbooks and CDs for the secondary maths course Oxford Maths for Victoria
• The launch of twelve new titles in the new Primary Essential series for the Singaporean primary school assessment market

CANADA

• Board-wide adoptions and a province-wide adoption in Newfoundland for the French as a Second Language series Communi-Quete, which is nearing completion
• Success for school texts such as Inside Track and BreakAway (both literature texts) following heavy emphasis on resources and programmes to help struggling students

PAKISTAN

• The launch of a new primary English course, On Track, which made successful inroads into a market traditionally dominated by competitors

SOUTH AFRICA

• The publication of core curriculum product for the Revised National Curriculum Statement for Grades 7 and 10. Preparations for 3 more grades (8, 9, and 11) are all underway

MEXICO

• The development of seven new texts in core subject areas for a new curriculum for the first year of secondary school

KENYA

• The publication of six primary school titles and ten secondary school titles for the final phase of curriculum implementation. Nearly 90 per cent of the books submitted by OUP Kenya were recommended for use in Kenyan schools and the branch is now the biggest publishing company in the country

TANZANIA

• The commencement of work on secondary school books in maths, sciences, and English. This will be the branch's first entry into this sector and publishing and the new curriculum should be accompanied by donor funding

INDIA

• The publication of major new series - Skyline (ELT), Enjoying Mathematics, Science in Everyday Life, and Environmental Education - for the new primary school syllabus announced by the National Board in India (NCERT)

AS THE MARKET LEADER, OXFORD REMAINS the primary target for other publishers in the market for British English. However, the position is reversed in American English, where we are aiming to take market share from our leading competitors.

In 2005/06 sales of Headway, our flagship programme for adult learners of English, exceeded 50 million units since publication. We continued to roll out the programme of new editions and support materials and published a third edition of New Headway Elementary, as well as a conversation course for the Czech Republic, Headway Talking Points. The Headway scholarship was awarded to Italy; three Italian teachers were sponsored by John and Liz Soars to study at Oxford ELT schools for a fortnight in the summer.

We continued to refresh the fast growing English File series with a 100 per cent new pre-intermediate edition and MultiPack editions for shorter courses which have significantly increased sales. We also published a fourth level of Natural English, a series which trains teachers to incorporate newer methodologies.

We published four new Business English/ESP titles within existing series Tech Talk, Business Focus, Passport, and Writing for the Real World, and provided multi-media solutions to support key series. In January 2006 we carried out a very successful product training seminar in Budapest, bringing together 25 sales delegates from European markets to focus exclusively on adult course and reference publishing.

One of the issues affecting our exams and course book publishing is the growing importance of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF), which aims to act as a frame of reference within which language qualifications, objectives, and standards can be described. We therefore published this year a book for Greece, the key exams market: B2 Solutions, which provides teaching material towards any exam specified at CEF level B2. We are also increasingly linking our general course materials more closely to the CEF in line with customer expectations.

This has been another innovative year for Grammar with the March publication of Oxford Practice Grammar, a long-awaited series for all levels of students. In January we launched the third edition of Grammar Spectrum for Italian Students to continue the success of this key title. Practical English Usage 3/e reached the top twenty in the BEBC February Bestsellers list.

For our dictionaries team, April marked the launch of the seventh edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary which includes a CD-ROM containing the full text of the dictionary, plus the Guide to British and American Culture and the Wordfinder dictionary. The publication of OALD7 also marked a notable innovation in Oxford ELT dictionaries: the use of the Oxford 3000, a list of the words which should receive priority in vocabulary study because of their importance and usefulness. This, together with the widest coverage of any edition of the dictionary so far, makes this seventh edition an outstanding achievement for OUP. We have produced special editions for Germany, India, North America and Japan, and there is also an International Students Edition.

The new Oxford Business English Dictionary for Learners of English, the first since 1993, and the first specialist Oxford ELT dictionary of the 21st century, was published in November 2005. It was enthusiastically received by teachers and trainers when it was launched at the Business English conference in Monaco.

On the bilingual front we published the Oxford English-Serbian Student's Dictionary, aimed at students at intermediate level and above. This represents a team effort between language experts working in Oxford, and translators, with a wealth of English teaching experience, working from Serbia. February 2006 saw the publication of a new, enlarged and revised edition of the Diccionario Oxford Study for Spain with a multi-platform CD ROM containing the full text of three dictionaries - the Study, the bilingual Phrasal Verbs Dictionary, and the Wordfinder topic dictionary -alongside a full range of interactive exercises and games.

In Spain, we had another good year in infantil (3- to 5-year-olds), with a 40 per cent increase in sales of Three in a Tree. In primary (6- to 11 -year-olds), we held on to our market-leading position in the face of strong competition from other publishers. New launches included the first three levels of Cool Kids, part of a six-level series for state primary schools, and Star Turn, a four-level series aimed at private language schools.

In secondary, we completed the launch of Spotlight, our four-level series for 12- to 16-year-olds, and Steps to Success, our course for upper-secondary students aged 16 to 18. Both courses have proved extremely popular with teachers and have helped to maintain our position as market leader overall.

The self-study holiday book market is an important area for us in Spain, and this year we launched a new 10-level edition of Holiday English, spanning all ages from six to sixteen.

English Train for 6th grade was launched and ensured that we held on to our number one position in second cycle (10- to 12-year-olds) in Portugal. This gives us a good base to build on over the coming years as we move ahead with our plans to achieve a leading position in there.

English continues to move down the curriculum, expanding the potential for sales to ever younger children. We continued to increase our offer with market-specific components of our successful international titles, especially the Happy series. In addition we were able to revitalize sales in Brazil with the successful launch of American Kids United. Cookie and Friends for pre-primary will increase our potential in this important and growing sector. The launch of Rainbow for Greece marked our firm commitment to specific publishing for this market.

We strengthened our market-leading position in Italy, with new editions and new packages. The new edition of Holiday Zone performed well, and light versions of existing successful series outperformed expectations and set a new standard for competitors to aim at.

The launch of Heroes in Greece gives us a strong differential offer in the private frontistiria market and in Poland the Repetytorium continued its success, with a light Limited Edition helping to maintain sales in the face of a large potential second hand market.