Oxford University Press: Annual report of the Delegates, 2006/2007

Contents (printed page numbering)

Notes by Andrew Malcolm
The Bitch of the Baskervilles
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
14 Professional
15 Journals
16 Reference
18 Higher Education
20 Schools
22 English Language Teaching
24 Music
25 OUP Delegates, Finance and Strategy Committees
Financial Reports:
26 Preamble. Note paragraph (d)
27 Abstracts of the Combined Balance Sheet of the Trading Operations as at 31/3/2007 (+2006) plus the year's Combined Results
28 Abstract of the Statement of Recognized Gains and Losses of the Trading Operations for the year ended 31/3/2007 (+2006)
29 Abstract the Combined Balance Sheet of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund as at 31/3/2007 (+2006)
30 Abstract of the Combined Statement of Financial Activities of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund for the year to 31/3/2007 (+2006)
31-35 List of prizes awarded during 2006/07 (not transcribed)
36-63 List of scholarly and professional books published during 2006/07 (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.

In last year's annual report there appeared a clear sign that, in defence of OUP's tax-exemption, especially in the USA, Oxford's lawyers are preparing to argue that the university itself has somehow now become an international institution, as though its assembly of buildings nearby the Cotswolds, and their inhabitants who happen to be the beneficiaries of their tidy incomes, are by-the-by. Vice-Chancellor John Hood stated: "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." This year, this theme, along with the usual associated unveiled threats is pursued in his third paragraph below (in maroon), with talk of the Press's "symbiotic relationship" with the university and "ambassadorial presence" around the globe. In one of its recent school science textbooks, Oxford has redefined Sodium Hydroxide as an acid. It seems as though its lawyers and scientists are now trying to redefine a university, or at least theirs, as some sort of gas.

Other points of note are the appearance in the Delegates' Property and Reserve of a new "Number Two Investment Fund", and the metamorphosis in the latest Trading Operations Abstracts of "surplus" into "profit". Is this an uncharacteristic attack of overdue honesty, I wonder, or could it be that the Chancellor Masters and Scholars are preparing to sell off their increasingly taxing department? The Press's illegal payments to the university since the publication of The Remedy have now topped £300 million.

The Bitch of the Baskervilles

One bulletin and one picture, however, are missing from the Delegates' official Report, those of OUP's International Division Director Susan Froud aka the Bitch of the Baskervilles. Just as at the beginning of the famous Holmes mystery, Akme has received an anonymous letter, which reveals that the former director of OUP's Canadian branch is now being squired by Chief Executive Henry Reece (see below), and has been using her 'position' to embark upon a bloodthirsty mass killing spree, engineering the demise of any and everyone who gets in her way (or in her bad books that day), even including such senior stalwarts as Peter Mothersole (Managing Director, ELT), Laura Brown (President, USA) and Roger Boning (Finance Director). There are rumours of corpses being found with faces grotesquely contorted, as if witnessing some unimaginable horror, of the baying of a frightful black beast of the night, of its perpetual slavering and strange phosphorescent glow, and of a curse that has fallen upon all the denizens of Walton Street.

It was Susan Froud, Akme regulars will remember, who in 2000 connived in the disastrous dismissal from OUP India of Rukun Advani (Director, Academic Publishing) and Anuradha Roy (Senior Commissioning Editor) on the grounds that their liaison and subsequent marriage presented a conflict of interest. Was that the kettle calling the pots blacks, by any chance? What do you think, Watson? - A. M.

John Hood

'The Press's publishing mirrors the University's focus in a great many ways, from online scientific journals to specialist humanities monographs to professional development to continuing education.'

THE PRESS ENJOYED ANOTHER VERY GOOD YEAR IN 2006/07, WITH A STRONG FINANCIAL result that reflected high quality and innovative publishing in every part of the business.

The relationship between the Press and the rest of the University is a symbiotic one, with the activities and reputation of each being closely linked with the other. The Press draws on a large number of authors, editors, and advisers within the University, while the active role of the Delegates is central to both the high quality of the Press's publishing and its international reputation. The Press's publishing mirrors the University's focus in a great many ways, from online scientific journals to specialist humanities monographs to professional development to continuing education.

The University has, as one of its departments, the world's leading university press both in terms of size and quality of output. To give an idea of scale: the Press is larger than all the American university presses combined, plus Cambridge University Press. The Press's large international presence, with 4,700 staff worldwide, means that the University has an ambassadorial presence in at least 50 countries. By its financial contribution the Press enables us to fund students, support research, and develop our infrastructure in ways that would otherwise be extremely difficult: the Clarendon Scholarships, the John Fell OUP Research Fund, and the purchase of the Radcliffe Infirmary site are some of the most obvious examples. In 2006/07 the regular annual transfer was £26.6 million, with a further special transfer of £20 million, and an in-kind contribution of £800,000.

In the Delegacy, Colin Mayer retired after 10 years with responsibility for publishing in economics, finance, and business. The development of the Press's publishing in these areas has paralleled the impressive growth of the Said Business School, of which Professor Mayer became Dean in 2006. He also served for seven years on Finance Committee, and played a key role as Chairman of the Press's Audit Committee.

David Sherrington retired as Delegate for Physics after five years' service, and lain Campbell retired as Delegate for Chemistry and Biochemistry after 10 years during which his wise counsel made a major contribution to the expansion of the science journals programme, particularly during the debates on Open Access.

David Warrell, who was responsible for Medicine and Music, retired after seven years' service. Even by the high standards of the Delegacy, he displayed a polymathic range and bone dry wit that respectively amazed and amused his colleagues.

They are succeeded by Sir John Vickers, Keith Burnett, Kay Davies, and Tony Hope.

Dr John Hood
Vice-Chancellor
University of Oxford

THE PRESS PUBLISHES FOR SUCH A WIDE DIVERSITY OF MARKETS AND GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS that any generalization relating to market conditions is likely to be inaccurate for at least some parts of the organization. That said, the markets in which the Press operates have been relatively benign towards publishing activities for the third year in succession. Perhaps the most significant macroeconomic development was the marked weakening of the US dollar against sterling: at the end of March 2006 the exchange rate was 1.73; by the end of March 2007 it had moved to 1.96, a change of over 11 per cent.

The Press's underlying growth, which strips out currency movements, acquisitions, and discontinued activities, was 6.5 per cent with sales increasing to £453.1 million (on a year-end rates of exchange basis that takes no account of currency movements, the increase was 1.1 per cent). This increase of 6.5 per cent compares well with underlying sales growth of 5.4 per cent in 2005/06, and an average of 4.9 per cent in the preceding five years.

The Academic Division in the UK had another good year with strong publishing, driven by a range of important titles described elsewhere in this report, leading to sales growth well above historic trends. The division was voted 'Academic Publisher of the year' and 'Distributor of the year' by the Academic, Professional, and Specialist Booksellers Group for the third year in succession. Scholarly, higher education, reference, and medical publishing all performed well. Of equal importance, the commissioning in the year was of the highest quality, particularly of the prestigious Oxford Handbooks, and the benefit of this will be seen in future years. Sales of online materials were buoyant, with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography doing particularly well. Online dissemination enables an extraordinary extension of access: virtually every holder of a public library card in England, and every public library member in Northern Ireland now has access to the ODNB, the OED, the Grove Dictionaries of Art and Music, and Oxford Reference Online through our national agreement with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the Public Library Service of Northern Ireland.

The ODNB was privileged to receive a visit from HM the Queen in May 2006. The OED's position as the arbiter of the English language was recognized by its starring role in the BBC TV series Balderdash and Piffle.

OUP USA experienced a year of mixed fortunes. Our scholarly/professional list continued to publish high quality titles and perform well, and our online reference sales saw excellent growth. Set against that, our trade, higher education, and law lists underperformed, and our attempt to publish for the US schools market was not a success. During the year we fundamentally restructured the US business to allow our publishers to focus on copyright acquisition and development. Future investment will be in the areas of academic, professional, and higher education.

Last year in this report I mentioned that our journals division had digitized its entire back archive to make available over 165 years of research and an estimated 4 million article pages to scholars. The response from librarians was extremely positive and we have signed national deals in the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan, as well as individual deals with numerous institutions around the world. The success of the Digital Archive underpinned a very good year for journals which also saw strong growth in sales to library consortia, in part driven by new international offices which were opened in India and China. The division reached three important milestones during the year: the Press celebrated its centenary as a publisher of learned journals; our list comprised over 200 journals for the first time; and we published our millionth article online.

The International Division maintained its extraordinary record with an eighth year in succession of growth well ahead of the market. The performance on a branch by branch basis was varied, as has often been the case with such a diverse geographical portfolio, with outstanding performances from South Africa and China, and good performances from Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Pakistan, and Tanzania. Particular mention should be made of OUP India which delivers double digit sales growth year after year; produces schoolbooks and higher education textbooks of the highest quality; and is responsible for publishing the world's pre-eminent scholarly lists in South Asian history, politics, economics, and literature. The Oxford Companion to Economics in India was launched by Dr Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India and himself an Oxford-educated economist, in February 2007. Local schools publishing and dictionaries in every branch, and higher education titles in selected markets, continue to be the main drivers of the International Division's growth.

Faced with a challenging background of a further decline in spending on resources in UK primary schools, and market growth limited to only maths and science at secondary level, the UK Education Division performed extremely well and produced its best result in recent years. In primary the addition of a phonics strand to the market-leading Oxford Reading Tree, combined with the RWI list acquired last year, gave the Press the strongest phonics offering in this growing segment of the primary market. The highlight of the secondary list was the new science programme for GCSE - 21st Century Science. Published in conjunction with the Nuffield Curriculum Centre, the University of York Science Education Group, and the OCR awarding body, the course proved extremely Popular, and materials have been purchased by about a quarter of English secondary schools. Export sales maintained their pattern of steady growth. The children's list, which is important to the promotion of reading and comprehension skills outside the formal school environment, saw the publication of the highly successful Peter Pan in Scarlet, the officially sanctioned sequel to Peter Pan.

The Press is the largest publisher in the world of British English ELT materials, and alongside that our American ELT list is growing rapidly. Our ELT division had a very good year with sales growth well ahead of the market. In Europe there were particularly impressive performances in Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic; the Middle East saw strong growth, as did Turkey; and Asia, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan all recorded substantial sales increases. During the year sales of Headway, the flagship programme for adult learners and the best-selling ELT course ever published, exceeded 55 million units in the 20 years since the first edition was published. In the last two years we have embarked on a major programme of investment in our American ELT list, which is published from New York, and this year we successfully launched a major new programme for the US market and a four-skills course for Asia and Latin America.

OUP España had another good year in advance of the major educational reform which will be introduced in 2007. We maintained our market leadership in the most important ELT market in the world despite substantial disruption caused by the transition in some regions from the current model of parental purchase to centralised buying by schools. At the same time Oxford Educación, our Spanish language school book programme, became the largest publisher in the Spanish secondary market: we have achieved this position in six years from a standing start.

The Press's surplus from trading, which looks at our results before interest, the funding of the OED, and tax, and which is the best measure of how we are performing on a year to year basis, increased from £72.3 million in 2005/06 to £75.1 million in 2006/07 (our net surplus increased from £70.5 million to £71.1 million). The result has been underpinned by strong cash generation with well over 100 per cent of the surplus converted into cash.

This level of surplus has been delivered in the second year of a substantially enhanced programme of investment in publishing overheads designed to deliver sustainable sales growth ahead of the market. This investment is essential because our customers are becoming more demanding and our competitors more active. We have to meet these competitive pressures, and at the same time ensure that everything we publish continues to meet the high standards that are synonymous with the Oxford name.

Increased investment will continue in 2007/08, particularly in key schools markets in the UK and China (where the general trends are compounded by major curriculum reform) and will inevitably have an impact on the surplus that we deliver in the short-term.

In July 2006 the Vice-Chancellor, Dr John Hood, and the senior management team of OUP South Africa met Nelson Mandela at a ceremony to mark the funding by our local branch of a Mandela-Rhodes scholarship. This occasion highlighted a number of different facets of the Press which I would like to touch on here. First, we are an international organization: of our 4,750 staff, 3,000 are employed outside the UK; we have publishing operations in 16 countries and sales offices in more than 90 countries; and 83 per cent of our sales are made outside the UK. Second, we are embedded as a local publisher in the markets for which we publish: in the case of South Africa we have had an office there since 1916, and remained in the country, at the request of South Africans opposed to the regime, throughout the period of apartheid rule. Third, and perhaps most importantly, we have an absolute commitment to the dissemination of high quality education and scholarship: in the case of this Mandela-Rhodes scholarship and the Clarendon scholarships mentioned later in this report we can see a dual benefit - not only have our publications helped to educate scholars, students, and schoolchildren, but the surplus generated by that activity is recycled directly into the provision of educational opportunity for those who otherwise would not have enjoyed it.

The Press continues to make substantial transfers to the rest of the University. In the last 10 years transfers have reached a total of £327 million, with two thirds of that figure in the last five years. 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 amount was initially set at £9 million in 1999 and was increased to £12 million in 2003. Strong financial performance has ensured that this minimum amount has been substantially exceeded every year since 1999.

The Press is part of the way through a further special transfer that will assist the University with major capital projects; continue the existing programme of Clarendon scholarships for overseas postgraduate students which since its inception six years ago has supported over 500 students; and maintain the John Fell OUP Research Fund which in less than two years has already provided over 160 grants. It would be difficult to conceive of activities more appropriate for Press transfers. The regular annual subvention, based on the results for 2006/7, will be £26.6 million.

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

Despite a challenging UK market, the higher education, reference, practitioner law, and medical publishing areas showed healthy growth. The positive sales performance across the medical list has been bolstered by strong sales to the corporate market. Higher education continues to be a tough market and, in addition to strong second-hand book sales, lower sell-through of adopted titles, and the uncertainty over the Waterstone's/Ottakars merger, the closure of several campus shops earlier in the year has done little to build confidence. Whilst sales through the traditional retailers have struggled this year, we have seen very high growth through the online sector across all our publishing areas. Sales across the UK wholesalers have fallen behind last year, driven by the fact that online customers are increasingly sourcing the majority of their titles directly from publishers. The library market continues to show growth, with a number of key library suppliers improving on last year's strong performance. This year has been another good year for online sales in a strong market, showing significant growth on the previous year. We have strengthened our relationship with the academic consortia JISC, whilst enjoying the first year of our relationship with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

OUP was voted 'Academic Publisher of the Year' and 'Distributor of the Year' by the Academic, Professional and Specialist Booksellers Group for the third year in a row.

The UK schoolbooks market continued to be challenging. Spend recorded through the Educational Publishers Council was down 8 per cent at Primary level. The secondary sector saw 10 per cent growth driven entirely from the introduction of new GCSEs in science and maths. Key Stage 3 spend was 18 per cent down and 'A' Level 6 per cent down. Within this difficult market OUP enjoyed considerable success in primary literacy, and took advantage of the GCSE science and maths opportunities.

The government continued to emphasize the importance of phonics in the teaching of initial reading and we were able to position OUP as the leading phonics publisher in the UK. Sales of the recently acquired Read, Write Inc. list exceeded expectations and Oxford Reading Tree's new phonics strand Songbirds also proved to be a winner.

Our new GCSE science course, Twenty First Century Science, published in a unique partnership with the Nuffield Curriculum Centre, the University of York Science Education Group and OCR, sold into over a third of English secondary schools. Our GCSE maths course published for the EdExcel specifications also proved successful.

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, once again, lower than the previous year - but our 'blended' offerings (where digital product is integrated with print components) sold well.

For our children's list the traditional high street remained very competitive, with major customers reducing the range of titles on offer and demanding larger marketing contributions for key titles.

[Picture captions: (1) OUP has an effective partnership with the Ruth Miskin, author of Read, Write Inc. (2) Julia Donaldson, best known as the author of The Gruffalo, introduces the creation of a new Songbirds Strand for the Oxford Reading Tree]

This has been a positive year in Europe for the Academic Division with medical, higher education and academic publishing performing particularly well. There have been strong performances from the online retailers with Bokus and Adlibris in Scandinavia, Amazon in Germany and France, and Bol in the Netherlands all achieving higher sales growth than the traditional retailers. Germany has performed particularly well with continued strong performances from the key library suppliers and a return to good sales by the key wholesalers. Eastern European markets experienced a more challenging year following large returns from the key distributors. Spain and Greece performed well with reference, dictionaries, and academic books delivering growth. Online sales showed consistent growth in our main European markets of Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and Denmark, although we also saw a high rate of growth across a much broader range of countries.

The ELT Division achieved strong sales growth throughout the continent, building on its market leading position.

In Spain, Europe's largest ELT market, the growth was achieved despite the introduction of Gratuidad (state funded books for schools) reaching the largest regional market in Andalucia. In Italy there were strong launches in all segments producing some outstanding results in both state and private education markets.

The introduction of new exclusive distribution arrangements in the Czech Republic and Slovakia helped contribute to the market-leading performance in Central and Eastern Europe. There were also major distribution reviews in Poland and Russia leading to substantially improved performances for FLT in these countries. Our exclusive distributors, Polanglo (Poland) and Relod (Russia), celebrated 15 years of working with ELT and the division benefited from a range of highly effective publishing and sales initiatives across Central and Eastern Europe. Also of note were strong sales in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey.

Government-driven reforms in the teaching of English continue both to challenge and to provide opportunities in many European markets and our staff in the region continue to work proactively with local educators on teacher training and syllabus design.

For OUP España's educational publishing business, Oxford Educación, it was a relatively quiet year as most schools chose to wait until the implementation of next year's educational reform in primary and secondary. Nevertheless, despite a burgeoning secondhand market fuelled by an increase in regions introducing free textbook schemes and a radical change in OUP España's distribution arrangements, sales increased in all market segments. Overall, Oxford Educación has become the leading secondary publisher in those subjects for which it publishes.

[Picture caption: Participants at the ELT conference in the Czech Republic]

Book sales in the US market, as tracked by the Association of American publishers for 2006, remained flat compared with 2005. Despite a year of great change, OUP USA saw strong growth in its academic, online, and trade reference publishing.

Conditions in the USA for higher education remain challenging: used book operations continue to become more efficient; and there is an extensive body of federal and state legislation under consideration that will affect the retailing of Higher Education product in the USA.

Online products experienced excellent growth as librarians across all segments expressed increased interest in buying or subscribing to Oxford content online, which is a reflection of the maturation of Digital Reference Shelf and Oxford Scholarship Online as successful online products, but also the steady move away from print in favour of e-content. The greatest challenge for the library sales team was the integration of law sales into its channel. With better than expected sales of our major new online international law service (International Law in Domestic Courts) and a full staff, the team is looking forward to a successful year in 2007/08.

Corporate sales, one of our newest channels, has already displayed significant potential for growth and development. A single sale during this past year was worth $1 million, and we fully expect that our increased focus here will bear consistently solid results.

Retail and wholesale experienced a challenging year. Two of our major accounts closed warehouses, and the retail independent marketplace continues to consolidate. We have, however, managed to achieve retail success with proprietary deals, Very Short Introductions merchandising, and a holiday OED promotion.

Online retail continues to experience extraordinary growth. Amazon remains our largest customer with strong growth. Amazon Marketplace accounts and specialized online retail have doubled their sales year on year. Digital partnerships with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are creating new channels for e-books and new ways to promote our physical books ensuring that online sales and rights will continue to grow.

ELT sales were very encouraging and we are beginning to see the positive impact of the recent focus on professionalizing our sales and marketing teams. In particular, ELT is seeing significant growth in sales of new academic ESL materials (both course materials and dictionaries) to students in colleges, universities, and high schools. Sales of our long-time best-seller, the Oxford Picture Dictionary family, remain robust.

[Picture caption: Jay Garfield and co-author Geshe Ngawang Samten present Ocean of Reasoning to the Dalai Lama.]

The International Division had a very good year and continued its remarkable track record of annual growth of over 7 per cent per annum for an eighth year in succession. Fortunately, there were no major economic downturns or natural disasters in branch territories other than political upheaval in Mexico that upset the market, but there were some changes in the branches when new Managing Directors in Canada and Australia came on board.

OUP South Africa became the largest branch in terms of both sales and profitability this year. Sales exceeded all expectations when the Department of Education increased its funding by 30 per cent after deciding to implement three new grades of curriculum instead of the usual two. With an excellent approval rate of new textbooks, the branch was able to benefit from this and school sales grew at a remarkable rate. An increased focus on dictionary publishing and marketing drove a strong increase in trade sales. The branch is moving forward with its plans to find a local partner in the context of Black Empowerment legislation.

The highlight of the year was the endowment of a Mandela-Rhodes scholarship: at a very special ceremony, attended by the Vice Chancellor, we handed a cheque to Nelson Mandela.

OUP China had an excellent year. The branch achieved record sales and saw double digit growth over the previous year. In a mature market with declining school enrolments this was an impressive achievement. There was no major curriculum change at pre-school or secondary levels but the branch increased its market share in Chinese Language Teaching, physics, biology, and geography, and retained its market leading position in each of these subject areas. It also continued to increase its ELT market share against stiff competition.

The one area in which there was curriculum change, primary Chinese Language Teaching, resulted in great success for the branch: OUP published two courses for this curriculum, and in a very crowded field captured a substantial market share.

Also in China, Oxford journals officially launched its representative office in Beijing in early 2007, followed by a conference for Chinese academic librarians in Xian. In addition to the obvious benefits of a local presence in the Chinese market, the new arrangement will enable Oxford journals to continue to strengthen and develop relationships with leading Chinese researchers and societies. Amongst the many new consortia deals of financial and strategic importance for the journals division in the region are agreements with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Science and Technology Policy Research Information Center in Taiwan.

India maintained its impressive record of double digit growth every year for more than a decade. India continues to consolidate its position as market leader in schools publishing. We are a much smaller player in the higher education market but nevertheless we are growing rapidly with our local publishing in engineering, management, and biotechnology. Twenty new titles were published this year, with 40 more in the pipeline for next year. Our academic publishing continues to be of the highest standard, enhancing the reputation of both the Press and the University.

In addition, Oxford journals now has a sales presence in India. A particularly significant consortia deal has been negotiated with INFLIBNET, which Currently represents 100 of the top universities in India.

This has been a year of transition in our Australia/New Zealand Branch. The Managing Director left in April following disappointing results in 2005/06. An interim manager spent six months analysing the business and refocusing Our efforts. The new Managing Director comes with considerable school publishing experience, and has restructured the school division and hired new primary and secondary school directors. In the meantime, the stable higher education division saw good growth of sales of local product, and the dictionary division retained its position as market leader. At the end of the year, responsibility for Singapore was handed over to OUP Malaysia which can service the market more easily.

[Picture caption: Pictured with Nelson Mandela at the Mandela-Rhodes scholarship ceremony are: back row (L to R): Hanli van Schalkwyk, Anthony Rangata, Thiathu Nemutanzhela, and Marian Griffin front row (L to R): Lieze Kotze, Dr John Hood]

In Canada we continued to expand our market share in the higher education division by successfully publishing local core textbooks; we refocused the school division; and we down sized our trade team which has increased the profitability from this division. An international higher education meeting was hosted by OUP Canada with the purpose of sharing best practice and discussing the potential for sharing and adapting each other's books.

Business has boomed in Kenya over the past few years as the new curriculum was implemented. We were concerned that we would experience a downturn this year because that implementation has come to an end. However, our supplementary publishing performed extraordinarily well and funding remained intact, allowing the branch to produce another excellent result.

We renamed our Malaysian operation in order to exploit our powerful name: formerly called Penerbit Fajar Bakti, it is now known as Oxford Fajar. The new name sparked a re-branding exercise and we are working hard to reposition ourselves in this challenging market. Curriculum revision has come to an end, and this has forced publishers to focus on the much more precarious supplementary market.

It has been a challenging year in Mexico as universities remained closed following the political turmoil after the Presidential election. This affected our law sales in particular. We had good success in the public school sector where most of our new Grade 7 textbooks were approved for use - and subsequently ordered in large quantities. ELT continued to grow, particularly in Central America where large adoptions were secured.

We have been investing aggressively in local school publishing in Pakistan with very pleasing results. We continue to be the leading publisher in the private school market with a large market share. Piracy remains a huge problem in this country but we fight it aggressively, bravely, and with considerable success. The Academic list continues to publish important works which enhance our reputation in the country, and our relatively recent foray into Higher Education publishing is producing welcome results.

We remain focused on the primary school market in Tanzania where we lead the market. This was a year of considerable publishing activity as new books were produced for every subject with the introduction of the new curriculum. Funding is soon to be released and we will reap the benefits of our editorial investment.

In the Middle East, ELT expanded its operations with new regional offices in Cairo and Dubai. Sales in the region grew exceptionally strongly due to an increased presence in the 20+ countries we serve and our first specific publishing for the region. We widened our distribution in Egypt; increased our supply to the Bahrain Ministry of Education; and performed well in private education in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. In addition to its work in other parts of the world, OUP is actively campaigning against piracy and copyright infringement within the region.

In South America all of our core markets performed very strongly with particularly good performances in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. These countries have benefited from a more stable economic climate, enabling ELT to develop its local promotional strength.

In Asia, we experienced excellent growth in Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan. Sales of Let's Go 3/e were strong in each of these markets, as were sales of our new American English materials for adults, and our new TOEIC(r)R test-prep programs. We encountered difficulties in the Taiwan market, as a result of weak local purchasing by students, competition among schools for those students, and local political anxieties.

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.

Publishing highlights included a number of new additions to the prestigious Oxford Handbooks series, with a major launch at the American Political Science Association's annual convention in Philadelphia of the first five volumes in the 10-volume Oxford Handbooks of Political Science series. We also published a range of Handbooks across the Linguistics, Business, Religion, Philosophy, and Literature lists, with 14 published in all, ranging from Bioethics to Pensions and Retirement Income, and from Religion and Science to Linguistic Interfaces.

Other high-profile and critically acclaimed titles included a major scholarly edition of the Letters of A. E. Housman, Sir Michael Dummett's Thought and Reality, David Malone's The International Struggle over Iraq, Roger Riddell's Does Foreign Aid Really Work?, Lynda Mugglestone's Oxford History of English, Fields Medallist Terence Tao's Solving Mathematical Problems, Robert May and Angela Mclean's Theoretical Ecology, James Sethna's Statistical Mechanics, John Coffee's Gatekeepers, and Roger Trigg's Religion in Public Life. Chris Wickham's The Early Middle Ages was first published in 2005 but has since won the Wolfson Prize, the AHA James Henry Breasted Prize, and the Deutscher Memorial Prize. It has recently been published in paperback.

Highlights in the US scholarly publishing programme included: George J. Mailath's and Larry Samuelson's Repeated Games and Reputations; Bruce Rosenblum's and Fred Kuttner's Quantum Enigma, which sped through five printings in its first year; Konrad H. Jarausch's After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945-1995; Carolyn King's and Roger Powell's A Natural History of Weasels and Stoats; Raja Menon's widely reviewed The End of Alliances; Jeffrey Alexander's The Civil Sphere ('Not only does The Civil Sphere argue in the great tradition of classic works, it has all the hallmarks of being a classic itself' Cultural Sociology); Robert Audi's Moral Value and Human Diversity; Roger Gottlieb's timely A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and the Future of the Planet; Serhy Yekelchyk's Ukraine: Birth of a Modem Nation; three flagship titles in our social work program, The School Services Sourcebook by... by (sic) Eileen Gambrill, and the Handbook of Social Work in Health and Aging by (sic); and Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty by Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr ('If ever policymakers in Washington, DC, needed a slim, thoughtful account of Iran's experiments with pluralism and democracy, now surely is the time.' The Economist).

Oxford Scholarship Online continued to develop, with more than 1,200 titles now live on the site in the four launch disciplines (Economics/Finance, Religion, Philosophy, Politics). We now plan to respond to customer demand by expanding the service to include all of the core academic disciplines in which we publish. We will launch the expanded service in September 2007.

Our Bibles programme saw a number of fourth-quarter releases, including the second edition of the Catholic Bible: Personal Study Edition; The Scofield Study Bible III, Holman Christian Standard Bible; and the augmented third edition of The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. We also moved forward with the publishing plans for a fourth edition of the New Oxford Annotated Bible.

In both the UK and the USA we publish some scholarly titles for the trade market. In this list, perhaps our most broadly influential US book this year was Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift, which identifies the galloping financial insecurity of the American middle class. Another political book of comparable impact was by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, in our Institutions of American Democracy series, which achieved increasing relevance through a series of political scandals.

In the UK the best-selling trade title of the year was the thirtieth anniversary edition of Richard Dawkins's Selfish Gene (sic), which sold extremely well. Another success story was Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley's high-profile collection exploring the influence of Dawkins's ideas and writings, Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, which was widely reviewed and sold well. Other trade science highlights included Martin Kemp's Seen/Unseen, a sophisticated intellectual assessment of the visual, cutting across science and the arts, and Mark Ronan's Symmetry and the Monster, bringing one of the great quests of mathematics to a wider audience.

Oxford World's Classics included a new translation of The Mobinogion by Sioned Davies, the first OUP book to boast a companion podcast on the OUP website; a major edition with simultaneous spin-off hardback of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, from Robert Douglas-Fairhurst; and a new edition of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, from Tom Keymer. John Gross's New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes received blanket coverage from reviewers. A strong range of new titles in the Very Short Introductions series included Economics, Racism, and African History, with the most widely-reviewed being Malise Ruthven's Fundamentalism and a hardback spin-off by Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life.

In India, two important Companions were published. The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology, edited by Dilip K. Chakrabarti, and The Indian Companion to Economics in India (sic), edited by Kaushik Basu, were launched with great fanfare and have sold well. There were three new titles in the Handbook series, covering Indian Agriculture, International Humanitarian Law in South Asia, and Water Resources in India.

The Art of India and Pakistan by Salima Hashmi and Yashodhara Dalmia has been enthusiastically reviewed.

Highlights of scholarly publishing from Pakistan include: Beyond Honour: A Historical Materialist Explanation of Honour Related Violence by Tahir S. Khan; Karakoram in Transition: Culture, Development, and Ecology in the Hunza Valley, edited by Hermann Kreutzmann; and Crescent Between Cross and Star: Muslims and the West after 9/11 by Iftikhar Malik.

Oxford University Press publishes a wide range of books and resources for academics, practitioners, and students in the professional fields of medicine and law.

Medical books enjoyed an excellent year with the publication of 150 books. This included 23 pocket-sized Oxford Handbooks in medicine and, for the first time, nursing. The new edition of the world-famous Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine sold over 30,000 copies in its first three months. We published the Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (sic), the fifth edition of the Shorter Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, and the second edition of Manage Your Mind - the bestselling self-help guide.

In the USA we published the tenth edition of the American Medical Association's Manual of Style, poised to become one of our best-selling books, as well as the second edition of Frederick K. Goodwin's and Kay Redfield Jamison's landmark Manic-Depressive Illness.

In law, we published additions to the Oxford Commentaries on the GATT/WTO Agreements by Joanne Scott and Carlos Correa respectively. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law, edited by Mathias Reimann and Reinhard Zimmermann, provides a major survey of the discipline and is rich in both history and analysis. Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law by Gus Van Harten seeks to take stock of this burgeoning area and provides an important critical analysis of private arbitration as a model for investment disputes.

The Law of Personal Property Security by Hugh Beale, Michael Bridge, Louise Gullifer and Eva Lomnicka is a major treatise which draws a purposive legal scope around devices designed to provide proprietary rights for a creditor. Gerard McMeel's work on The Construction of Contracts provides a similarly impressive synthesis in the best traditions of legal writing which will appeal to researchers, practitioners, and students alike.

In the USA we co-published, with the International Law Institute, the Digest of United States Practice in International Law. This annual volume is prepared by members of the Legal Advisers Office of the US Department of State and is widely recognized as the definitive source of state practice for the USA and an invaluable resource for practitioners and scholars in the field.

The scholarly journals market is undergoing a period of rapid change, with the trend towards online delivery as the primary medium of publication, cuts in library budgets, and consolidation amongst commercial publishers continuing. Despite the market pressures, Oxford Journals once again achieved record growth in 2006, with particularly impressive sales to consortia of our current journal collection and recently digitized back archive. The digital archive was launched in May 1006 and contains over 3 million articles stretching back to the first issues of most of our journals, some as early as 1849. Its perceived scholarly value to academic institutes has been borne out in national deals to universities in the UK, Japan, Australia, Canada and Germany, as well as to many individual academic institutes around the globe.

Major milestones for Oxford journals this year included reaching 200 journals on our list, the largest it has ever been; celebrating our centenary as a publisher of learned journals; and publishing our millionth article online.

The beginning of 2007 saw the Oxford Journals list grow to just over 200 titles. The growth of our mathematics list was a particularly noteworthy development during the year. We revived a partnership with the London Mathematical Society, taking on the publication of their prestigious titles, , and Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society. The journals had originally been published by us until 1999, when they moved to Cambridge University Press. We also purchased four mathematics journals from Hindawi Publishing Corporation: International Mathematics Research Notices; International Mathematics Research Papers; Applied Mathematics Research Express; and International Mathematics Research Surveys. Other notable additions to our list include the launch of Literary Imagination, and The Chinese journal of International Politics.

The Oxford Open initiative, our collection of open access experiments, has continued to develop throughout 2006. There are approximately 50 journals now taking part in the optional open access scheme, and by the end of the first full year of this experiment, almost 400 papers had been published under this model across 36 of those titles. We remain committed to sharing the results of these experiments with the community in order to increase knowledge and understanding of open access, and to help direct us, and other publishers, towards viable business models for the future.

Oxford University Press celebrated its centenary as a publisher of learned journals. In 1906 OUP first began a journals publishing programme with the inaugural issue of Quarterly Journal of Medicine (QJM) appearing in print the following year. QJM, under the guiding hand of renowned physician and medical researcher, Sir William Osler, is acknowledged as being the first major medical publication by the Press, which now publishes over 1800 Medical books and 40 medical journals. To celebrate this significant milestone we published a collection of 100 seminal papers from many of our journals. Editors were asked to nominate papers that had made a significant impact in their particular fields, that had changed perceptions, were the most highly cited articles, or that were recognized as simply outstanding pieces of research.

Finally, we published our millionth article online. We now have over 1 million articles hosted on our online platform (not including the digitized back archive). The three top contributors to this are Notes and Queries, English Historical Review, and Nucleic Acids Research.

[Picture caption: Oxford Journals holds an event in Tokyo for Japanese editors and society publishers]

English dictionaries launched the Compact Oxford English Dictionary for Students in August 2006 and embarked on a set of lexical data enhancements that will serve as the foundation of new publishing and licensing projects over the next several years. Bilingual dictionaries successfully published seven titles in its new Beginner's series (Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, German, Chinese, Japanese), leading the group to its strongest financial year on record. Both units participated in a major campaign to review and refresh the dictionary's brand, the results of which began appearing on covers in March 2007 with the unifying new look and feel rolling out over the back to school and university seasons.

Oxford Reference Online experienced double-digit sales growth with subscriber increases in every market, particularly public schools. New editions of the celebrated Oxford Companion to Wine and the Oxford Companion to Food were published in October to an impressive amount of international media attention. And the new Oxford Companion to Black British History, the first reference book on the subject, was published to coincide with the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the UK and launched at the House of Lords in March.

The US reference programme produced an impressive number of muiti-volume reference sets, led by the Oxford Encydlopedia (sic) of Maritime History, the 22-volume Complete Works of W. E. B. Du Bois, and the 10-volume Encyclopedia of Popular Music, which received starred reviews in Booklist and Library journal. The three-volume Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895 was published in July to more starred reviews, and received the outstanding reference set of the year award from the Profession and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers.

This concentration of publishing in African American history and culture marks a union of reference's print and online publishing strategy. These titles, alongside Africana, the forthcoming African American National Biography, and several other anchoring Oxford copyrights form the basis of the online Oxford African America Studies Center. Launched in April 2006, the Center received an 'unprecedented 11' rating on a 1-10 scale from Harvard's online librarian guru Cheryl LaGuardia, writing for Library Journal. The Center has been critically acclaimed for both its impressive collection of content as well as its ease of use, making it a welcome addition to the growing body of highly respected and successful online publishing at Oxford.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography had a successful year, with online sales trebling from the UK, and doubling in the Americas. This was due partly to comprehensive take-up by UK public libraries, but also to sustained growth elsewhere. Regular online updates included the first in a programme of articles on groups of people in British history; and January's new selection of people who died in 2003 - among them Roy Jenkins, who, among his many achievements, was a former Chancellor of this University. Initiatives to attract a wider audience focused on making some articles available free for limited periods, as a taster for the main edition: these articles link with public anniversaries and events (such as exhibitions at Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery). The ODNB's achievements were recognized when the Queen visited the project, and launched the May 2006 online update.

Online sales were also strong for the Oxford English Dictionary, in both the UK and the USA. In its four regular online updates the OED published 33,000 revised and new senses (in 11,500 entries). Meanwhile editors completed the editing of about 23,500 senses.

In the International Division, OUP Australia's dictionary market share climbed to an impressive level as completely new editions of the First Australian Dictionary and First Australian Thesaurus were launched.

A special anniversary edition of the hugely successful Kamus Dwibahasa dictionary was published in Malaysia.

Dictionary publishing enjoyed a bumper year in South Africa with the arrival of the new edition of the South African Oxford Secondary School Dictionary; the first ever Oxford English/Afrikaans Bilingual Dictionary; primary science and maths dictionaries that were co-published with the Education Division in the UK; and the first two in a series of multi-lingual primary school dictionaries.

[Picture caption: Professor Sir Brian Harrison, former Editor, presents a special volume of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to Her Majesty the Queen, watched by (L to R) Henry Reece, Robert Faber, Sue Matthew

Higher education is an important publishing area for OUP, with strong lists in the UK, USA, and in many international markets. Politics in the European Union 2/e. In June, the HE department launched its first e-book to accompany Peter Atkins and Julio De Paula, Physical Chemistry 8/e. Our first interactive online case studies appeared in June to support Max Watson et al, Oncology: An Oxford Core Text 2/e.

Our focus in law has been on acquiring new product and bringing out new editions of many of our titles. We published brand new texts: Foster on EU Law and Jonathan Herring, Medical Law and Ethics. Jill Poole, Textbook on Contract Law came out in its eighth edition in June and the new edition of Jonathan Herring, Criminal Law: Text, Cases and Materials published in the same month. Andrew Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law and Judith-Anne MacKenzie and Mary Phillips, Textbook on Land Law went into new editions.

In business and economics we published the following first editions: Douglas West et al, Strategic Marketing; Stephen Taylor and Astra Emir, Employment Law: An Introduction; Frank Cowell, Microeconomics: Principles and Analysis; Charles Van Marrewijk, International Economics; Nigel Bradley, Marketing Research: Richard Gay et al, Online Marketing: A Customer-Led Approach; and a new edition of the market-leading Alan Bryman and Emma Bell, Business Research Methods which published in four-colour.

We had a number of new texts and new editions publish on our politics and international relations lists. New titles include: Tim Dunne et al, International Relations Theories and Alan Collins, Contemporary Security Studies. New editions include: Michelle Cini, European Union Politics 2/e and John Baylis et al, Strategy in the Contemporary World 2/e. In sociology, we published the third edition of Sociology by James Fulcher and John Scott.

Science saw the publication this year of the flagship new edition of Lewis Wolpert et al, Principles of Development and many brand new first editions including: Peter Atkins and Julio De Paula, Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences; Robert Snowden, Basic Vision; Arthur Lesk, Introduction to Genomics; and Jonathan Crowe et al, Chemistry for the Biosciences.

Highlights from medicine and dentistry include the first editions: Mossey et al, Essential Skills for Dentists and Carton et al, Clinical Pathology: An Oxford Core Text.

Higher Education in Canada remains a core publishing activity. Successful books this year included the branch's first four-colour introductory textbook for one-semester sociology courses, Lorne Tepperman's Principles of Sociology. We entered the psychology field with three major upper level texts: John G. Benjafield, Cognition; Douglas P. Crowne, Personality Theory, and Neil Mck. Agnew and Sandra W. Pyke, The Science Game.

Despite the challenging environment in the USA, we had some terrific success stories. Ron Adler et al's Interplay 10/e increased sales 50 per cent over the previous edition, and Ron Adler is now our largest franchise author. We secured a number of 1000+-copy adoptions, which is a new milestone, and we successfully launched a number of major first editions, including Robert H. Lavenda and Emily A. Schultz, Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human? and Sherry Devereaux Ferguson, Public Speaking.

In early 2007 OUP USA acquired the assets of Roxbury Publishing, a small, privately held publisher of books in communications, sociology, criminal justice, and politics. These new titles were smoothly integrated into the HE operation in the last quarter of the year, and this now gives us a significantly stronger presence in sociology and criminal justice (the latter being the fastest growing US HE market at present).

India continued to publish in core areas of engineering and management producing 20 new titles, and achieving excellent sales growth.

Mexico strengthened its grip on the undergraduate law market with focused publishing for a variety of courses.

In Pakistan core textbooks were published for Pakistan studies, Pakistan economics, mathematics, and physics.

South Africa produced five new textbooks in management and business, and 10 new editions of successful texts. Work began on a new law programme that will launch next year with four core texts.

Work is underway on core first-year textbooks in law, sociology, and education in Australia. This year saw the successful publication of the third edition of Gordon Winch, Literacy. Law of Work by Rosemary Owens and Joellen Riley is the first text in the market that reflects new Australian employment law.

OUP remains the leading literacy publisher in the UK, with Oxford Reading Tree generating more revenue than ever. This derives both from successful new publishing into the brand and from 'new look' versions of the core stories. A refreshed version of our recently acquired phonics list Read, Write Inc. was launched in September and was adopted widely by primary schools across the UK.

In the UK our primary maths list continues to grow. This year saw the pre- publication release of evaluation material for our new programme, Maths Investigator. This has been designed to match the 2006 Renewed Framework and takes a problem-solving approach to maths teaching. The scheme includes integrated whiteboard resources to support teaching and learning.

In secondary OUP publishes across five main subject areas (maths, science, geography, English, and modern foreign languages). Maths continued to perform well with our market-leading Key Stage 3 scheme, Framework Maths holding up well and the new GCSE Maths resources proving successful. The highlight of the Science list was our continued publishing into Twenty First Century Science. This programme has proved both controversial and successful, with the High Mistress of St Paul's Girls School, Clarissa Farr, writing to The Times in these terms: 'The approach is challenging, rigorous and, above all, exciting. By linking science to the real world, it embodies the long overdue recognition that science is a dynamic, living subject.'

For geography we published a Scottish edition of our bestselling Key Stage 3 scheme, which has been well received. The English list moved into new territory with the publication of Rollercoasters, educational editions of the best in contemporary teenage fiction, supported by extensive teaching material. In order to grow this list we have entered into a partnership with Random House Children's Books, the UK's leading publisher in this genre. Modern foreign languages had another tough year as schools continue to move away from the subject at GCSE. However, we built our sales within GCSE French with the publication of a new course and we continue to dominate in 'A'-level Languages.

We published electronic components to support all our major schemes 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 highlight of our children's fiction publishing was Geraldine McCaughrean's Peter Pan in Scarlet. Great Ormond Street Hospital held a competition to find the best author for the 'official' sequel to Peter Pan, for which they own the copyright. Geraldine won against stiff competition and a proportion of the royalties is paid to Great Ormond Street. Our children's picture books were lead by a re-launch of the six Winnie the Witch titles, whilst in non-fiction we continue to publish popular reference titles such as The Ultimate Book of Knowledge which has been translated, through co-editions, into 11 languages.

In Spain, Oxford Educación successfully launched Meniques, its brand new Pre-Primary publishing programme, which puts it in an excellent position to challenge the dominant local publishers. In Secondary it currently publishes 972 titles across 15 subject areas and is currently market leader in Language and Literature, Physics, Biology and Technology. In French it is on the verge of overtaking the leading competitor.

Highlights of the International Division's schools publishing include:

CHINA

• The launch of two new primary Chinese courses which captured substantial market share
• A new edition of Progress along with exam skills books for the Certificate (senior) level ELT curriculum in Hong Kong
• New editions of our market-leading physics and biology courses

INDIA

• Avenues, a completely new multi-skilled ELT course for primary schools
• Science in Everyday Life, books 6 to 8 with interactive CDs.
• A revised edition of Time, Space, and People for the middle school social studies curriculum.

CANADA

• The completion of Communi-Quête, the junior high French as a Second Language course
• Culture Quest, a major new social studies text for the four Atlantic Provinces.
• Voices and Visions, a major new history text that was chosen by the Alberta Department of Education for use in high school.

MEXICO

• The publication of core textbooks, approved for use in grade 7, in English, Spanish, biology, maths, history, geography and science

KENYA

• An emphasis on primary and secondary revision books as curriculum revision has come to an end
• The publication of primary readers in English and Kiswahili
• The production of four primary ELT titles for Zambia

PAKISTAN

• A variety of core programmes for primary and secondary science; primary maths; O-Level English; and O-Level Pakistan Studies

TANZANIA

• The completion of 39 projects for the new curriculum in the areas of English, science, social studies, Kiswahili, geography and history

MALAYSIA

• Capitalization on the medium change (to English) for mathematics and science by publishing O-level textbooks

SOUTH AFRICA

• Publication across the board for three new grades of curriculum - years 8, 9, and 11
• Publication African language readers in line with expansion plans into indigenous languages publishing
• The launch of a new edition of the Secondary School Atlas using cartography produced by the UK education division

AUSTRALIA

• Establishment of New Maths Plus (for the Horwitz acquisition) as the market leader in New South Wales and Victoria
• Publication of primary maths for Western Australia
• Launch of Successful English for the secondary market

Headway, our flagship course for adult learners, continues to defy all predictions of decline and remains the best selling ELT course in the world. In June 2006 we celebrated 20 years of Headway with the authors, John and Liz Soars. Sales over the 20 years have exceeded 55 million copies and we continue to publish new editions and components for this outstandingly successful series.

This year we launched the third editions of New Headway Elementary and Pre-Intermediate as well as three levels of New Headway Plus, edited to be appropriate for markets in the Middle East and North Africa. To complement this we also published the first two books of a three-level Academic Skills series linked to Headway for students in tertiary education.

2006/07 was a very good year for English File which is growing ever stronger. The eagerly awaited New English File Intermediate was published in August 2006, joining New Elementary and New Pre-Intermediate, and the series continues to extend its reach - it is now one of the most successful courses in the upper secondary segments of many European countries whilst still maintaining its appeal for students worldwide.

On the Business and ESP list, we published international editions of the very successful Business Basics and Business Objectives, plus Essential Business Grammar & Practice. We also launched the first levels of the Oxford English for Careers series with titles in Tourism, Technology and Commerce. Business one:one is a unique first-to-market title providing material designed specifically for use in one-to-one teaching situations.

In June 2006 the flagship Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary achieved sales of a million copies of its seventh edition, published in February 2005, and is now heading steadily towards the second million. Last year the department also published new editions of the Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary for Learners, Oxford Idioms Dictionary for Learners, Oxford Elementary Learner's Dictionary (now knon as the Oxford Essential Dictionary), Oxford Wordpower Dictionary for Arabic-speaking Learners of English and Diccionari Oxford Pocket Català. A new dictionary, the Oxford Learner's Pocket Dictionary of Business English, was published in November 2006.

Sales of our grammar list have increased during 2006/07 by almost 20 per cent. Highlights included the third edition of Grammar Spectrum for Italian Students; our first three-part Grammar series - Oxford Practice Grammar - and the relaunch of the Test it, Fix it series. All of these have exceeded sales expectations. Our policy of producing more market-specific versions of favourite monolingual Grammar titles is also paying off significantly: Grammar Spectrum for Hungary has achieved twice its forecast sales to date and we will be building on this type of publishing in the future.

In schoolbooks publishing we launched two courses for the Middle East: English Time Special Edition and Top Score. These adaptations of existing courses mark the beginning of a new schoolbooks publishing programme for the region, where we intend to grow our presence in the medium term. We have also launched our major new course for Latin America, Engage, the first course produced specifically for the American English secondary market for some time.

In Italy market share in both sections of secondary school has continued to grow, and we have seen the best ever adoption levels for two key titles, New English Zone and Horizons; one fifth of the Italian upper secondary segment - Biennio - now uses Horizons. In primary, the launch of the first three levels of Treetops, brought forward by a year, has resulted in astounding sales volume and our highest ever market share in first grade.

The continuing trend to introduce English earlier into the curriculum means that our primary publishing continues to grow, as does the need to offer local language support in teachers' materials for primary teachers who are frequently not language specialists. Sales are spread across a range of titles but the Happy series continues to be our best seller, with support materials in a wide range of languages. Reform of the education system saw strong growth in the sales of Chit Chat in the Czech Republic.

In Poland, Sparks, our Polish-specific lower primary course is now market leader, and in upper primary the launch of New English Zone consolidated the course's strong position. We also launched Connections for the lower secondary gimnazjum sector, while the Repetytorium - our very successful exam preparation course maintains its strong position in upper secondary. The second half of the year has seen uncertainty around the way books are chosen and approved whilst a draft bill proceeds through Parliament. We have responded by accelerating our plans.

The Readers list has seen strong volume growth. Thumbelina, by Sue Arengo, in the Classic Tales series, won The Extensive Reading Foundation 2006 Language Learner Literature Award for Young Learners.

The Spanish publishing team has a reputation for delivering strong, market-leading publishing and 2006 was one of our biggest years to date. We launched four brand new courses - Cool Kids in primary, English Alive and High Score in secondary, and English In Context in upper-secondary - all of which are key titles for the future. In Portugal, we had a successful launch of our new secondary course, Bright Lights, consolidating our position as a leading publisher for this market.

Our Teacher Development list continues to do well in major prizes. Assessing Young Learners by Sophie Ioannou-Georgiou and Pavlos Pavlou won the British Council Innovation Award. The judges commented: 'It is a joy to read such a well thought out and imaginative textbook.' And Writing with Children by Jackie and Vanessa Reilly won the English Speaking Union Duke of Edinburgh Award. The judges said of this book: 'This is a wonderful resource and provides a clear link between theory and practice with excellent tasks.'

In our Exams publishing, we published a preparation course for the launch of the new TOEIC Speaking and Writing test in Japan in December 2006. The new book, Tactics for the TOEIC Speaking and Writing Tests, was developed in close association with Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, the developers of the test, and is the first product of a new and fruitful working relationship

Multimedia components are now an essential part of all our teaching and learning packages: we provide online support for teachers and students, as well as CD Roms and Video and continue to monitor the market demand for new technology.

During the year, the AMELT team in New York launched a major new programme for adult ESOL learners in the United States, Step Forward, under the series editorship of Jayme Adelson-Goldstein. Early market feedback, adoption tracking, and sales have all been extremely gratifying. We also began the launch of Smart Choice, a four-skills course for secondary and adult learners of American English in Asia and Latin America.

Music published a strong frontlist in all core areas, expanding our educational series for young players learning instruments, with new titles for piano, saxophone, and viola, and building on our award-winning songbook series, Voiceworks. A recent title, Cello Time Sprinters, won the Music Industries Best Education Award for 2006. Choral highlights included a collection of Edwardian carols and a book of popular Christmas classics for choirs, two songbooks for youth choirs, and Bob Chilcott's witty Weather Report, a BBC commission taking a tongue-in-cheek look at a British obsession.

John Rutter was awarded a CBE in this year's New Year's Honours list and was also invited to compose a new carol for the Christmas service at Sandringham. Gerald Barry was featured composer at the Presence Festival in Paris and had major performances across Europe and America; Michael Berkeley's opera Jane Eyre was premiered in the USA and he continued his residency with the New York Philomusica; Bob Chilcott's Folksongs were repeated at the Last Night of the Proms.

In the USA we forged a successful partnership with C. F. Peters, which now distributes our rental catalogue, and in the UK we signed a new agreement to continue distribution of the ABRSM catalogue.

OUP Delegates

Dr John Hood (The Vice-Chancellor)
Dr Stephen Goss (The Senior Proctor)
Dr Sally Mapstone (The Junior Proctor)
Dr Katya Andreyev (The Assessor)
Sir Peter North (Chairman of Finance Committee)
Professor Roger Ainsworth
Sir John Ball
Professor John Barton
Professor Keith Burnett (from 1 October 2006)
Professor Iain Campbell (to 30 September 2006)
Dr Roger Crisp
Professor Kay Davies (from 1 October 2006)
Professor Tony Hope (from 1 October 2006)
Professor Desmond King
Professor Chris Leaver
Professor Hermione Lee
Professor Ewan McKendrick
Professor Martin Maiden
Professor Colin Mayer (to 30 September 2006)
Professor Anna Christina Nobre
Professor Christopher Pelling
Professor David Sherrington (to 30 September 2006)
Professor Paul Slack
Sir John Vickers (from 1 October 2006)
Mr Bryan Ward-Perkins
Professor David Warrell (to 30 September 2006)

OUP Finance Committee

Dr John Hood (The Vice Chancellor)
Dr Stephen Goss (The Senior Proctor)
Sir Peter North (Chairman)
Dr Henry Reece (Secretary to the Delegates)
Professor Roger Ainsworth
Mr Tim Barton
Sir James Crosby (from 1 October 2006)
Ms Susan Froud
Mr David Gillard (Group Finance Director)
Miss Ros Hedley-Miller
Ms Charlotte Hogg
Professor Desmond King
Mr David Levin
Mr Peter Marshall
Professor Colin Mayer (to 30 September 2006)
Professor Paul Slack
Sir John Vickers (from 1 October 2006)

Group Strategy Committee

Dr Henry Reece
Mr Tim Barton
Mr David Gillard
Ms Susan Froud
Ms Kate Harris
Mr Jesus Lezcano Garcia
Mr Peter Marshall
Mr Martin Richardson

Introductory note

The Delegates wish to observe that:

(a) the abstracts of Accounts are drawn from the full audited accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund of the Press;

(b) with regard to the abstract of the combined Balance Sheet of the Trading Operations, the short term cash position is substantially stronger at 31 March than at other times of the year;

(c) a proportion of earnings and cash balances arising in certain overseas countries is not available for use elsewhere;

(d) the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund was established during the year ended 31 March 1984 in order to distinguish more clearly the reserve investments of the Press from the assets and liabilities relating to the Trading Operations. The Fund holds and manages the properties of the Press together with the income arising therefrom. Since the Press is a charitable enterprise and does not enjoy the protection of limited liability, the purpose of the Fund is as follows:-

(i) to provide protection to the University against its having its credit called upon to underwrite any future liabilities of the Press's Trading Operations. The minimum volume of net liquid reserves appropriate to achieve this objective is determined by the size of the Press's Trading Operations;

(ii) to provide the Delegates with a source of finance from which they may make grants for specific University projects.

Statement by the Auditors to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press

We have examined the Abstract of the Accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates Property & Reserve Fund of Oxford University Press for the year ended 31 March 2007 which comprises the balance sheet, combined results, and statement of recognised gains and losses of the Trading Operations and the combined balance sheet and statement of financial activities of the Delegates Property and Reserve Fund (the 'Abstract').

This report is made solely to the Delegacy of the Oxford University Press, as a body, in accordance with our terms of engagement. Our work has been undertaken so that we might state to the Delegates those matters we are required to state to them in this report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than Oxford University Press and the Delegates as a body, for our audit work, for this report, for our audit report on the full annual Accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates Property & Reserve Fund of Oxford University Press, or for the opinions we have formed.

Respective responsibilities of directors and auditors
The Delegates are responsible for preparing the Abstract in accordance with the applicable Statutes of Oxford University. Our responsibility is to report to you our opinion on the consistency of the financial information contained in the Abstract with the audited annual Accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates Property & Reserve Fund of Oxford University Press.

Basis of opinion
Our work was limited to ensuring that the financial information within the Abstract was consistent with the audited annual accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates Property & Reserve Fund of Oxford University Press.

Opinion
In our opinion, the financial information contained in the Abstract is consistent with the audited annual accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates Property & Reserve Fund of Oxford University Press for the year ended 31 March 2007. The audited annual accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates Property & Reserve Fund of Oxford University Press can be obtained from Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP.

(Signed) Deloitte & Touche LLP
Chartered Accountants and Registered Auditors
Gatwick, UK
29 May 2007