Contents (printed page numbering)
Comment by Andrew Malcolm
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.
Two new developments leap out of this year's OUP Report and Accounts, both of which signal the Press's alarm that under the 2006 Charities Act it may soon be obliged, like other publishers, to pay tax on its trading profits. The first is the announcement of a big hike in its annual funding of the Clarendon Scholarships, and the second is the radical reorganisation of its "Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund", its vast financial war-chest.
The Clarendon Scholarship Fund was founded in 2001, a year or so after Akme's publication of The Remedy, with its surprising revelations about the origin and vulnerability of OUP's secret 1978 exemption from tax. The scholarships (hence also known as the "Akme Exhibitions") are funded entirely from OUP's profits and are awarded to needy international graduate students who want to pursue their studies at Oxford. The money for the scheme has grown gradually, but this year is suddenly increased (it is claimed) to £7.5 million, about 10 percent of OUP's current annual profits. Oxford's application form states that "about 120" of these Akme Exhibitions are available for the year 2009/10 (see also its faq pdf.)
This is plainly a sop tossed in the direction of the Charity Commissioners, who now require all would-be charities to demonstrate that they provide public benefit (see especially the report's paragraph 52 of 55), a stricture that has obliged many private schools to offer similar charitable-looking perks: bursaries for working-class kids (only the 'bright' ones of course), sharing sports facilities with nearby state schools, involvement in community projects, and so forth. The extent to which these manoeuvres will prove successful in alleviating their schools' tax obligations remains to be decided by the Charity Commissioners next March (2009). Obviously OUP is hoping that, despite being "a different total animal", a commercial book trader, it may be treated on a similar basis.
OUP's reorganisation of its financial holdings is explained in paragraph (d) below of the Delegates' preamble to the audited accounts (compare this with their 2006/7 version), and inaugurates a new 'University Reserve Fund' specifically designated for transfers to the rest of the university, which, it ever-more-frequently avers, is now actually reliant for its solvency upon the profits made by the Press (e.g. The Times 25/1/05) - a sort of blackmail demand for more state funding should OUP be taxed.
Akme regulars will already know that in 1999, in the wake of OUP's axing of its modern poetry list and The Remedy's publication, Oxford's previously skinflint press publicly 'donated' £60 million to the university for capital projects, followed in 2003 by another £60 million for the purchase of the John Radcliffe Infirmary site for development into a new £600 million campus. Its annual report of that year put its total donations over the previous five years at £202 million. Nowhere, apart from on this website, has the legitimacy of these huge transfers been challenged, and now this massive publishing heist is being formally institutionalised by OUP's inauguration of a 'University Reserve Fund' expressly designed for the purpose.
Of course, whether or not either of these moves washes in terms of the new public benefit requirement, neither of them addresses the 30-year anomaly of OUP's (and CUP's) tax-exemption, which was granted, remember, on conditon (a) that any and all of their surpluses be ploughed back into non-commercial publishing and (b) that they on no account become sources of revenue for their universities, conditions of which Oxford's press, in particular, is now in spectacular breach. Nor does either move address the unfair trading issue, the circumstance which has in the interim enabled OUP steadily to gobble up its tax-liable competitors, monopoly-style.
Accountancy scholars will also note that OUP's figures this year are for the first time expressed simply in £millions, to a single decimal point, rather than, as previously, in £thousands, thereby eliminating all those tiresome little digits. Doubtless one of Oxford's exiled poets will be celebrating this exciting new magnanimity with a congratulatory Ode (Owed?) to a Decimal Place (all submissions welcome).
Finally, amidst all the furthering and all the progressing, the peculiar fiction plugged in OUP's reports of 2005/6 and 2006/7 that its international book trading means that the Cotswold university somehow exists everywhere in the world, is here again repeated, by both Hood and Reece, this time with the buzz-word "reach" doing the latter's overwork. But "reach" appears in the same thesaurus entry as "grope" and "grasp" and "grab", and when laboured soon merely starts sounding like an international mispronunciation of "wealthy and powerful", as in "reach beyond the dreams of avarice". Never enough already, that is the problem with charity. - A. M. September 2008
'The largest and most successful University Press by some margin, it operates on a global scale to further the University's aims, and publishes across a broad portfolio to achieve the University's objects of disseminating education, scholarship, and research as widely as possible.'
THE PRESS CONTINUES TO OCCUPY A UNIQUE POSITION IN THE PUBLISHING WORLD. The largest and most successful University Press by some margin, it operates on a global scale to further the University's aims, and publishes across a broad portfolio to achieve the University's objects of disseminating education, scholarship, and research as widely as possible. Last year 2007/08 saw every part of the Press achieve its publishing objectives, resulting in strong financial results across all seven divisions.
Why is the Press such an integral department of Oxford University? I have written on a number of occasions about the ambassadorial role played by the Press's many offices in countries where the rest of the University has no base of its own. The countless locally published school books, higher education textbooks, and dictionaries establish a clear sense of what 'Oxford' means for education in the minds of children, students, and teachers throughout the developed and developing world. The Press also continues to support the very core of scholarly research, exploring and experimenting with new publishing models, such as open access and the digital library Oxford Scholarship Online, in order to plot a successful path for the future dissemination of the best research.
The financial contribution that the Press makes to the University as a result of pursuing its aims enables many worthwhile initiatives. One that is particularly close to my heart, the Clarendon Scholarships, deserves special mention. Since the launch of these scholarships in 2001, more than 500 overseas postgraduate scholars have been given the opportunity to progress their studies here. There are currently 259 scholars from 43 countries pursuing studies across the academic spectrum. They represent the elite scholars of their generation, and the Clarendon Scholarships allow the University to compete effectively for this talent with the major research universities in North America. Many Clarendon Scholars would be unable to study here without this financial help, and the value they add to Oxford University in the long-term is almost immeasurable. So far the Press has transferred £25 million into the fund, and next year will increase the transfer to £7.5 million per year. This is a superb example of how the Press makes a tangible difference to Oxford's ability to maintain its position as one of the leading universities in the world.
Chris Leaver retired as Delegate for Biology after five years' service characterised by conscientious involvement in every aspect of the role. Keith Burnett stepped down after only one year because of his appointment as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. They are succeeded on the Delegacy by Mari Sako and Ian Walmsley.
Dr John Hood
FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO REPORT THAT THE PRESS HAS enjoyed relatively benign market conditions, and, for the most part, last financial year was no exception. In the second half of the year, however, turmoil in financial and housing markets did begin to have an impact on the US and UK economies. As the financial results in this report testify, these developments did not significantly affect our trading performance during 2007/08, or indeed that of our major competitors. There is clearly a risk, however, that we will face tougher trading conditions in 2008/09.
Sales last year were £492.3 million, an increase of 5.4 percent over the previous year measured on a like-for-like basis that strips out currency translation movements, acquisitions, and discontinued activities. On a headline basis, using year-end rates of exchange and not adjusting for the effects of currency movements, the increase was 8.7 per cent. The continuing trend of sales growth in recent years is a good reflection of our growing 'reach' as an international publisher: to give just one example, we moved into local language publishing in Spain only six years ago and we are now the largest secondary school publisher in the country.
The UK Academic Division had a strong publishing year, both in quality and volume, which led to solid sales growth. Scholarly publishing, in particular, had an extremely good year. A highlight was the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary which is a true younger sibling of the OED, at one-tenth of its size, but including around a third of its content. The division was voted the 'Academic Publisher of the year' and 'Distributor of the year' by the Academic, Professional, and Specialist Booksellers Group, in both cases for the fourth year in succession. And the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography deserves special mention. The University was, once again, awarded one of the Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education, this time for the ODNB, one of the few humanities projects ever to win this award.
With the launch of several new online resource centres from both the UK and US businesses, such as Oxford Language Dictionaries Online, and Oxford Islamic Studies Online, our ever-growing presence on the internet is strengthening our ability to disseminate Oxford content as widely as possible. Last year Oxford Scholarship Online, which carries our monographs online, extended its coverage by launching nine new subject areas, bringing the total to 14. Sales doubled with 430 subscribing institutions across 43 countries. Publication of the African American National Biography (AANB) is especially worthy of note. Eight years in the making and representing the largest black biographical project ever undertaken by the scholarly community, the AANB received an unprecedented amount of mainstream media attention for an institutional publication.
OUP USA's reputation as an award-winning publisher continues to thrive. The history programme received four major awards including its third Pulitzer prize in four years, this time for the latest volume in the Oxford History of the United States, What Hath God Wrought. The US market remains challenging: scholarly publishing, online reference, law, and brain sciences performed
well but trade and higher education had a difficult year. Our subsidiary rights activity had an excelIent year in both New York and Oxford. A very substantial increase in the electronic licensing of Oxford content was the biggest reason for this growth, allowing Oxford to disseminate its publishing through relationships with a wide range of partners producing products for handheld, mobile, and institutional markets, amongst others.
Oxford Journals had a good year of like-for-like growth as the division continued its evolution into an online-only business. Last year research article downloads were more than 62 million, 20 per cent more than the previous year. Online delivery enables us to 'reach' out to institutions in some of the poorest countries of the world in a way that we would never have been able to do in print. Through our various developing countries schemes, we now provide free online access to 1200 institutions across 41 countries, such as Sudan and Nepal. We are also continuing our experiments with open access, collectively entitled the Oxford Open initiative. Seventy-one of our 220 journals now operate some form of open access model, resulting in 7 per cent of their collective content being made freely available online last year.
The International Division recorded its ninth year in succession of sales growth well ahead of the market, with all ten branches achieving their sales budgets. With two of our offices, Pakistan and Kenya, operating in difficult and unstable political environments in the year, this achievement should be viewed as even more impressive. There was particularly strong sales growth from India, Malaysia, and Mexico, but the main feature of the year, however, was the consistency of performance across the board. Our continuing investment in local publishing throughout our branches is proving to be highly successful. In Mexico, for instance, a flourishing local ELT programme for grades 7 to 9 has reinforced the belief that many markets prefer local product, written by local authors, that addresses their culture and curriculum. India's programme in local Higher Education publishing for engineering and management has grown to a significantly sized list in just three years. Two branches have been celebrating important anniversaries: in 2007 Malaysia celebrated 50 years as a branch, and is able to claim a history as old as the country itself; Australia is currently celebrating its centenary with several events planned, including the publication of Speaking our Language - the Story of Australian English.
The Press has firmly established itself as the leading phonics publisher in the UK schools market, supporting a growth in demand for phonics-based reading schemes. It is estimated that approximately 40 per cent of British children now learn to read with an Oxford book, an impressive measure of the spread and quality of our educational publishing. Our commitment to education in the form of literacy is also evidenced in the books we publish for children to read for pleasure. In 2007 we became the largest imprint in the UK schools market and the second largest schools publisher overall. Market conditions continue to be challenging, with secondary school spending well down compared with the previous year, largely as a result of the new curriculum which is being introduced in 2008. In this context, the UK Education Division's sales growth, underpinned by strong development in primary, was a particularly impressive result.
The Press is the largest publisher of British English ELT materials in the world, and our reputation for American English materials is growing rapidly. We celebrated several significant anniversaries last year: the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary which is one of the most widely used books that the Press has ever published; and the twenty-first year of publishing Headway which is one the most successful ELT course ever published by anyone. We achieved strong sales growth across the Division, reflecting the great breadth of our 'reach' around the world. Particularly strong performances came from the Middle East, North America, South-East Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Brazil, which is now our third largest ELT market behind Spain and Italy, had exceptional sales.
OUP España has grown rapidly in the last five years, and this
reflects the development and maintenance of our market-leading
position in ELT, and more recently the growth of a very successful local schools programme. The market in Spain is not an easy one, as a result of significant educational reform affecting various levels of primary and secondary; the widespread implementation of gratuidad, (the state-funded purchase of textbooks); and an unusually competitive environment. Nevertheless, in a year of major change linked to curriculum reform, our business performed very well.
The Press's surplus from trading, which looks at our results before interest, the funding of the OED, and tax, and which is a measure of the efficiency of our financial performance, increased from £75.1 million in 2006/07 to £79.2 million in 2007/08. The Press continued its strong track record of cash generation, with over 100 per cent of the surplus converted into cash.
In the last five years the Press has increased its surplus from trading by £9.8 million while at the same time continuing to invest heavily in our publishing overheads to ensure that we fulfil the University's objectives of disseminating the best research, scholarship, and education around the world, both effectively and efficiently. There are several key areas of focus: supporting the migration of scholarly and reference publishing towards a predominantly online environment; growing our schools, higher education, law, and medicine businesses; accelerating the development of our American ELT programme; and investing in a Spanish distance-learning project. We are also investing in our sales and marketing capability, and nearly 40 per cent of our staff numbers worldwide now work in these areas. This allows us to compete effectively across our markets, and ensures that we maximise the spread and impact of the high quality publishing that we produce.
I would like to return to the theme of 'reach' that I highlighted earlier in this report as one of central importance to our mission and, therefore, to that of the University at large. With around 4900 staff and 51 offices around the world, 16 of which run major publishing operations, the Press helps to embed the best of Oxford's values in the minds of millions of people every year. Our scale allows us to ensure wide dissemination of a seminal work such as Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It which we published in 2007. It also allows us to sell very effectively over a number of years a major work of intellectual history such as Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment that we first published seven years ago. Our involvement in the dissemination of the highest quality educational materials is equally important. We are committed to the notion of education as the ladder of opportunity. In many parts of the world the simple fact that the Press has a local presence and is publishing high quality schoolbooks, requires competing publishers to raise their standards which in turn benefits local school children.
Dr Henry Reece
THE UK BOOKS MARKET HAS BEEN WITNESSING CHALLENGING
TIMES THIS YEAR, with a number of key UK retailers and wholesalers struggling to show any significant growth. Waterstones has had a tough year as it continued its programme of store closures. Blackwell bucked the trend with a positive performance driven by a strong BTU season. Despite disappointing sales through the more traditional retail channels, we have continued to see healthy growth through both the UK online retailers (in particular Amazon) and the library supply sector. The UK library suppliers have been supported by the significant increase in our academic publishing, partly driven by this year's research assessment exercise (RAE).
The Academic Division has seen sales growth across the majority of its publishing areas. Academic and Trade produced another strong performance and was significantly buoyed by a very strong front list, including the recently published Oxford World's Classic: Sweeney Todd (which benefited from a film tie-in). Reference and Dictionaries have shown healthy sales growth, following the publication of the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Higher Education has suffered this year from a high number of campus bookshop closures and a strengthening second-hand market; however, sales have grown, with the Law and Business lists performing particularly well. The publication of the long-awaited Bellamy and Child: European Community Low of Competition had a major impact on Law sales. The Medicine list has had a tough year with corporate sales but has nevertheless delivered decent year-on-year sales growth overall.
The division's overall performance was supported by its established and new online products which again delivered strong income growth on last year. The Press strengthened its relationship with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) through renewing and extending the current deal to four years, making a wider range of our online products freely available to the general public. The deal now includes the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Reference Online, Grove Dictionary of Music and Grove Dictionary of Art as core products, and Oxford Islamic Studies Online, Who's Who/Who Was Who, Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, and Oxford Language Dictionaries Online as optional products to each library.
OUP was voted 'Academic Publisher of the Year' and 'Distributor of the Year' by the Academic, Professional and Specialist Booksellers Group for the fourth year in a row. This is a particularly significant award as UK booksellers are asked to vote, and we compete against all of our major rivals in academic book publishing.
In 2007 the UK Primary schools market was less depressed than in recent years. After several years of decline, spend recorded through the Educational Publishers' Council in 2007 was 5 per cent greater than the previous year. The increase was driven by a demand for phonics resources as the Department for Children, Schools and Families continued to emphasize the importance of phonics in the teaching of reading. OUP is the leading phonics publisher in the UK and our lists continued to perform well, delivering double digit sales growth for a second year.
Ahead of a new curriculum being introduced in secondary schools from 2008, spend in this sector saw a predictable decline. The market (as measured by the Educational Publishers' Council) was 10 per cent down in 2007 against 2006. New A levels and a new Key Stage 3 curriculum will be taught in schools from September 2008, while new GCSEs for most subjects (the exceptions being English, science, and maths) will follow in 2009. Within this fluid market we outperformed our competitors and increased our share, although sales were down in absolute terms. Twenty First Century Science continued to perform well. We grew share in English, geography, and modern languages and maintained our position in maths.
The digital market in schools has now evolved so that teachers expect a 'blended' approach to resource provision, with a digital component within each scheme offering added value. Electronic Learning Credits still provide both primary and secondary schools with ring-fenced funding for digital resources (until August 2008) but year-on-year spend on digital resources is down once again.
For our Children's list the traditional high street remains very competitive. However, we once again delivered sales growth, partly through our effective performance with book clubs and other 'special' customers.
[Picture captions: (1) David Hendy (left), author of Life on Air: a history of Radio 4 which won the History Today-Longman Trustees award. Seen here with Taylor Downing, one of the prize judges. (2) Over 90 children from local schools took part in a dinosaur themed event at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History to celebrate the success of the Dinosaur Cove series. (3) The republished tale of Sweeney Todd, an Oxford World Classics title, represents the first reprint since its serialization in The People's Periodical in 1846-7. To date, we have sold more than 100,000 copies.]
WE CONTINUE TO SEE VERY POSITIVE SALES PERFORMANCES FOR ACADEMIC DIVISION PUBLICATIONS, with robust growth in the majority of the European territories. The Higher Education, Law, Academic and Reference lists have performed well this year and the publication of new Russian dictionaries supported continued growth in Eastern Europe. The Nordic countries continue to be dominated by the expansion of online retailers and this channel is now outperforming the traditional retail channel. The Netherlands performed well in all areas of our publishing but Higher Education and Practitioner Law performed particularly well. Eastern Europe continues its success from last year and a number of deals with major distributors have allowed exceptional growth in our Reference and Academic lists. There are also early signs of a strong Higher Education market. The European library suppliers have had another good year and have done particularly well with this year's strong Academic publishing.
ELT also achieved strong sales once again in many European markets. Italy celebrated the twentieth year of its very successful distribution partnership with an excellent set of results; double digit sales growth being driven by major new course launches. Eastern Europe continued to provide attractive growth opportunities, with Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic all performing ahead of the market. In Ukraine, sales reached new highs with changes to our local distribution arrangements and new investment in promotional activity. In Poland, growth was supported by an effective publishing response to late reforms initiated by the Ministry of Education, and we faced similar challenges, with equally good results, in Croatia. Greece, Switzerland, Serbia and Bulgaria also performed well. In Turkey we successfully defended our position in the face of ongoing government reforms and competitive pressures.
For OUP España's educational business, Oxford Educación, various levels of primary and secondary publishing have been impacted by the implementation of educational reform. This prompted a significant amount of new textbook publishing by all publishers and an exceptionally high level of change in every region. In both ELT publishing and Oxford Educación there was an overall increase in the number of people using OUP content. in Oxford Educación this meant that we were able to consolidate our position as the leading secondary publisher.
[Picture caption: European delegates at the 2007 ELT Sales Conference, Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire]
BILLINGS FOR ONLINE PRODUCTS CONTINUED TO GROW
RAPIDLY AND SHOWED SIGNIFICANT growth compared with
2007/08. This growth was led by the Digital Reference Shelf
and Oxford Scholarship Online, both of which had banner years.
Our major new online Dictionary product, Oxford Language
Dictionaries Online, was particularly well received by all market segments. Law online sales exceeded budget again, due to the continued success of International Law in Domestic Courts. We anticipate building on this year's successes in 2008/09. The online Reference programme is positioned for a milestone year: for the first time, sales of online products will overtake those of print.
The independent retail marketplace continues to consolidate, albeit at a slower pace than in recent years, and we have seen small gains here due to stronger sell-through and a focused effort to reduce returns. Retail chain accounts (Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million) will finish the year down, due to a change in emphasis to our publishing programme and account instability.
We have managed to recover some of this business with backlist programmes. The biggest success story was Amazon, which has grown by double digits for the last three years and will end 2007/08 with growth of over 40 per cent compared with the previous year.
It was a strong year for our academic publishing, and for our publishing in the Brain Sciences.
In both the Clinical Medicine and Brain Sciences areas, key copyrights such as Wolff's Headache, have also made a strong contribution to our special sales efforts. This is a particularly good sales channel to support dissemination of Oxford medical publishing. We also experienced some early success with the launch of our Law publishing.
The Higher Education environment remains challenging in the USA, where the industry is dealing with an increasingly efficient used book market, price resistance, continuing federal and state legislation that will affect the retailing of higher education products in the United States, and some leakage of product from the international market. We have also been rebuilding our HE team and publishing in recent years, and it is taking some time for the effects of changes to be felt. Our sales in this market were disappointing in 2007/08.
Nevertheless, 2007/08 was the best year in the history of licensing and rights for OUP USA, finishing significantly ahead of last year and budget. Key developments included the signing of core long-term deals with library aggregators to sell individual copies of OSO titles, and expanded deals with mobile partners such as Handmark, who licence a range of our products for inclusion in handheld devices.
ELT sales in the United States were extremely strong this year, with excellent growth across all educational sectors and regions, including American public schools, colleges and universities, and publicly-funded adult basic education programmes.
[Picture caption: From left: Tim Barton (President of OUP USA), Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor in Chief Oxford African American Studies Center), and Casper Grathwohl (Publisher) at the launch event for AASC in Harlem, New York.]
THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION HAD ANOTHER EXCELLENT YEAR - THE NINTH IN SUCCESSION to deliver sales growth of more than 6.5 per cent. Unlike the previous couple of years, however, there was considerable instability in several markets where we operate. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan on 27 December 2007 and the disputed elections in Kenya on 29 December both caused disruption in the early months of 2008 but our branches responded with great flexibility and managed not only to recover their sales but to exceed their sales budgets by the end of March.
CHINA
Following the establishment of a representative office in Beijing last year, Oxford journals has made some significant strides in the Chinese market - in February 2008 we signed an agreement with the Chinese Academic Library and Information System (CALIS), giving 600 members institutions the option to subscribe to our full collection of journals (around 200) at a discounted rate.
SOUTH AFRICA
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
CANADA
MALAYSIA
MEXICO
KENYA
PAKISTAN
TANZANIA
ELT
Sales in Asia were mixed this year, with extremely positive results, well above local market growth, in South East Asia, particularly Vietnam and Thailand, and in Korea. In Japan and Taiwan performance was below par, reflecting very challenging market environments.
The local peak sales season in South America, which runs across our fiscal year end, remains in full flow at the time of writing. However, it is evident that ELT results will be very strong this year. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador will all see excellent outcomes, driven in part by stronger local economic conditions and by increased publishing output of American English titles from New York and Oxford.
[Picture captions: (1) A book launch in OUP, India for The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature. From left to right: Mehr Afshan Farooqi; Dr Hamid Ansarl, Hon'ble Vice-President of India; Prof Mushirul Hasan, Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia University; and Manzar Khan, Managing Director of OUP India. (2) As a part of its on-going teacher training programme, OUP Pakistan organized nationwide workshops on its English language series for schools, conducted by Abbas Husain, who is an experienced teacher trainer.]
Our two main centres for scholarly publishing are in the UK and the USA. There are also well-regarded scholarly lists in OUP India and OUP Pakistan.
Both the UK and USA had strong publishing years, building on existing strengths, with title numbers in the UK boosted in a number of areas by the research assessment exercise. High-profile and critically acclaimed titles in the UK included the Collected Critical Writings of Geoffrey Hill, the Collected Works of Thomas Middleton; the first volume of Terence Irwin's Development of Ethics, a historical and critical study of the development of moral philosophy over two thousand years; James Griffin's long-awaited study On Human Rights; James Hurford's The Origins of Meaning; Martin West's landmark volume Indo-European Poetry and Myth; Edmund Thomas's Monumentality of Roman Architecture; Steven Weinberg's Cosmology, and Andrew Van de Ven's Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research.
A strong line-up of Oxford Handbooks included titles on the United Nations, Continental Philosophy, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Systematic Theology. We continued to pursue a successful new strand of development economics publishing with Roger Riddell's Does Foreign Aid Really Work?, widely agreed to be the definitive account of the topical subject of international aid. Steve Bruce's Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland was selected by A. N. Wilson as one of his books of the year in the Evening Standard. Paul Bew's Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006 also received many glowing reviews.
Highlights on the USA list included: Eric Chivian's and Aaron Bernstein's ambitious survey, Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity; Margaret B. Gargiullo et al.'s A Field Guide to the Plants of Costa Rica; The Periodic Table, its Story and its Significance by Eric R. Scerri; When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge by K. David Harrison; Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C S. Lewis by Michael Ward; Taming Democracy: The People, the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution by Terry Bouton; and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution by Benjamin L. Carp. In addition to several awards for our music and criminology books, the history programme received a total of four major awards, more details of which can be found in the 'Prizes and Awards' section of this report.
During the year we also launched an expanded version of Oxford Scholarship Online our online platform for academic monographs, extending the service from the four launch modules - Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Religion - to include nine new subject areas: Biology, Business and Management, Classics, History, Linguistics, Literature, Maths, Physics, and Psychology. This takes OSO into most of the core areas in which we publish across the UK and USA, with Music also planned for inclusion in May 2008. Subscribers to OSO now number well over 400 institutions worldwide.
In both the UK and the USA we publish a selection of titles which marry intellectual integrity with broader appeal as trade books. Of particular note on the US trade list was Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What We Can Do About It, which raced through seven printings in its first year and won the prestigious Lionel Gelber Prize. Rarely has an economics book enjoyed both such mainstream praise and such sustained sales. The most recent volume in the Oxford History of the United States, Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, was granted a similarly enthusiastic reception ('exemplary' - The Washington Post), winning the New York Historical Society's award for best book of the year and also recently winning a prestigious Pulitzer prize for History. Other highlights included Morton Keller's America's Three Regimes: A New Political History; Playing With the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports by Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano; Scott Reynolds Nelson's Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Icon, which won the Organization of American Historians' Merli Curti Award and the Arts Club of Washington's National Arts Award for Arts Writing; and John Ferling's Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence.
The best-selling trade title in the UK for the second year running was the third edition of Richard Dawkins's Selfish Gene, with more than 90,000 copies sold during the year. Other UK highlights included Phil Davis's widely reviewed biography of Bernard Malamud, and the first of two biographical volumes on Erza Pound by David Moody; Bernard Wasserstein's Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time was much praised; David Hendy's Life on Air: A History of Radio 4; Peter Atkins's introduction to the laws of thermodynamics, Four Laws That Drive the Universe. Finally, the year closed with the publication of another book from Richard Dawkins, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, which is already attracting significant review attention.
The main focus on the Oxford World's Classics list was on a series re-brand, designed to make the books look more accessible and appealing in an ever-more-crowded classics market, and which launched in the trade during April 2008. Meanwhile, we managed to secure the tie-in to the Tim Burton film of Sweeney Todd with an edition commissioned for just that purpose - the first time the original tale has been reprinted since its serialization in The People's Periodical in 1846-7. To date, we have sold more than 100,000 copies. A strong line-up of new titles in the Very Short Introductions series included books on a range of topics from Human Rights to Classical Mythology, and from The Quakers to Game Theory, nicely demonstrating the scope of the series. The year closed with the timely publication of Rana Mitter's Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, which promises to do very well indeed.
In Pakistan, New Perspectives on Pakistan: Vision for the Future brings together theoretical insights and empirical research on Pakistan in an unprecedented manner. Changing Perceptions, Altered Reality: Pakistan's Economy under Musharraf analyzes the economic and social problems faced by the country over the last seven years. Representing Children: Power Policy and the Discourse on Child Labour in the Football Manufacturing Industry of Pakistan examines the determinants of child labour in a specific situation.
Oxford University Press publishes a wide range of books and resources for academics, practitioners, and students in the professional fields of medicine and law.
In the UK our medical books programme enjoyed a good year with the publication of 120 titles. These included the first five Oxford Handbooks in Psychology, the Oxford Textbook of Old Age Psychiatry, ten Oxford Handbooks in Medicine & Nursing (including the hugely successful Oxford Handbook of Clinical Skills & Examination), six titles in the Emergencies in... series, and eight Oxford Specialist Handbooks. We redesigned and refocused The Facts series, which provides reliable and authoritative information to patients, their families, and carers on a variety of ailments. The first 'new look' titles have proven to be a success and most have secured endorsements from leading associations and societies.
This year Medical Books signed an important contract with Medhand International AB, a Swedish company with headquarters in London. Their product, Dr Companion, provides an electronic hand-held solution for doctors. It is a bestselling product in the PDA market and is hugely popular in the medical community. The agreement with Medhand is to develop our medical Oxford Handbooks and selected spin-off series for PDA.
In the USA, we spent the year defining the clinical medical books strategy and building its future programme. We published 38 titles, including the first five Oxford American Handbooks in Medicine, the second edition of a major clinical genetics text by Epstein, Inborn Errors of Development, and a brand new book on Genomics and Clinical Medicine. We launched several series under the Oxford American Medical Libraries umbrella which saw a 50,000 copy special sale of a title on Menstrual Migraine. We launched our medical education grants programme and subsequently received grant support in order to produce an important new publication by Dan Wallace on Lupus.
In the UK our law programme saw the publication of Robert Stevens' Torts and Rights, presenting a new theory of the law of torts. It has also been an important year for coverage of diplomatic law with both Amerasinghe's Diplomatic Protection and a major new edition of Denza's Diplomatic Law. There were also further new additions to the Commentaries on International Law series in Nowak and McArthur's The UN Convention Against Torture and Francioni's The 1972 World Heritage Convention. A new title on international law by Vaughan Lowe was added to the Clarendon Law Series.
In our professional law publishing we saw the first OUP edition of Bellamy & Child's EC Law of Competition added to our range of important practitioner texts in this area. McLachlan, Shore and Weiniger's International Investment Arbitration provided a major new practitioner resource in this increasingly important area. A new loose-leaf service, the Annotated Companies Act, edited by John Birds, provides a clause-by-clause analysis of the most significant revision of company law for over 20 years. We were also successful in taking over publication of the Reports of the Patent Cases from the start of 2008.
Our professional publishing for the police this year included two new handbooks; The Blackstone's PCSO Handbook and The Blackstone's Senior Investigating Officers' Handbook which offer accessible and portable coverage of law, procedure, and policy for use on patrol. Additionally, Investigative Interviewing by Eric Shepherd is the first practical manual on all aspects of interviewing technique aimed specifically at police detectives. The US law programme had a strong 2007/8. The scholarly programme saw a number of important titles, including Dinah Shelton's Regional Protection of Human Rights, which offers a groundbreaking analysis of the human rights obligations that a state assumes upon joining a regional body. Other publishing highlights included Richard L. Revesz's and Michael A. Livermore's Retaking Rationality, which reconsiders the role of cost-benefit analysis in protecting health and the environment, Mechanisms of Democracy by Adrian Vermeule, and Constitutional Interpretation by Sotirios A. Barber and James E. Fleming.
Oxford journals has witnessed another year of growth to the list, now publishing 222 journals, compared with 200 at the end of the previous calendar year.
We have launched eleven new journals, most of which focus on new and emerging research areas where there is a genuine gap in the market. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, for instance, aims to fill the gap between traditional academic journals and the popular press by providing a widely accessible yet scholarly source for the latest thinking on environmental economics and related policy. Another launch, The Journal of Topology, is rapidly becoming the leading place to publish in the field and is the fourth title we have published on behalf of the London Mathematical Society. For the first time we are also publishing a new student journal, Bioscience Horizons, showcasing the best of undergraduate research work in the biosciences. The first issue was published in April 2008.
With approximately two-thirds of our journals list comprising society-owned journals for which we provide a publishing service, in an increasingly competitive market place, it is vital that we are successful at retaining and winning new contracts with societies. Our track record has continued to improve, with only one journal leaving our list last year, several successful retentions following tough tendering processes, and many new relationships formed. One example is our growing publishing partnership with the European Society of Cardiology, which has led to us publishing two more of their journals, European Journal of Echocardiography and Cardiovascular Research, bringing the total to four.
In order to establish factual evidence to support our strategy to maintain a collection of the highest quality journals with fair prices, we commissioned a report by the Library Information Statistics Unit (LISU) at Loughborough University to evaluate our performance against our competitors. The study, published in April 2007, revealed that 40 per cent of our biomedical journals were ranked in the top 25 per cent of their ISI category. Furthermore, our journals had the second highest median impact factor (2.80) in the biomedical category. Our prices were consistently in the lowest band, and saw the lowest increase over the period 2000-6.
Our experiment with open access, the Oxford Open initiative, now has over 71 journals taking part. For those journals using optional open access as a model, where authors chose to pay for their papers to be made freely available online, 720 papers were open access, representing an average of 7 per cent of their overall published content in 2007.
[Picture caption: Oxford Journals host Chinese editors and society partners at the first such event In China. Similar events are also held in the UK, US, and Japan each year.]
In Reference, the online publishing programme continued its expansion with a series of new product launches. Oxford Language Dictionaries Online (OLDO) - a bilingual dictionary site featuring French, Spanish, Italian, and German language resources - was launched in August 2007. A site enhancement including the addition of Russian, Chinese, and audio pronunciations was launched in May 2008. In October, Oxford Islamic Studies Online (OISO) debuted, offering a collection of up-to-date reference, secondary, and primary source materials (including two translations of the Koran and a concordance). Reviewers have hailed OISO as a welcome beacon of reliability and authority among the misinformation and skewed commentary about the Islamic world which is available on the rest of the web. Both OLDO and OISO received "best new website" awards from the American Library Association, Library Journal, and the Association of Professional and Scholarly Publishers.
In addition to these new sites, Grove Art Online and Grove Music
Online were re-launched in enhanced Oxford web environments, with more robust searching, deeper linking, and integration with other Oxford art and music content. For example, Oxford Music Online allows Grove Music content to be used in tandem with content from the ten-volume Encyclopedia of Popular Music published in print last year to great acclaim.
The University received the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, one of very few humanities projects to win this award. Complementing the ODNB's historical coverage, an online edition of Who's Who added much-consulted biographical information about 33,000 living people, as well as 90,000 historical figures, to the growing online list.
The print programme has also had a strong publishing year. The sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, published globally in September, exceeded sales expectations in almost all markets. On the multi-volume library reference list, publication of the African American National Biography (AANB) is especially worthy of note. Eight years in the making and representing the largest black biographical project ever undertaken by the scholarly community, the AANB received an unprecedented amount of mainstream media attention for an institutional publication. It was published in coordination with the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University with support from the Mellon, Ford, and Gilder-Lehrman foundations.
As a crowning achievement of the year, OUP received the prestigious Dartmouth Medal for publication of the five-volume Encyclopedia of Maritime History. Awarded to one reference book each year by the American Library Association, the prize honours excellence in scholarly publishing. Oxford last won the medal for the publication of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
The editorial project to rewrite the Oxford English Dictionary has made good progress. Since March 2000, the OED has published revised entries online in a single alphabetical sequence (extending so far from M to Q), while also inserting new words elsewhere. In March 2008, editors released the first revisions of clusters of words chosen across the alphabet because of the extent of change in their usage - words such as 'air', 'cancer', 'computer', 'gene', 'language, and 'love'. Improvements in research and other methods have enabled editors to devote more time to this wider-ranging work, and to complete 40 per cent more text than in previous years.
Our international reference publishing continues to grow in significance. The Indian Academic reference programme was further enhanced by the three-volume publication of Toward Freedom and an updated edition of The Oxford Companion to Economics in India. Other successful publications included two books on modern Indian art: Bharat Mota and The Triumph of Modernism. The Oxford India Collection grew with the publication of The Oxford India Gandhi, authored by Gandhi's grandson who is currently Governor of West Bengal; the Oxford India Nehru; and The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature in two volumes. South Africa expanded its range of bilingual dictionaries with the South African Sesotho se Leboo English Dictionary, and five English-Afrikanns (sic) Oxford First Bilingual Dictionaries for children aged from two to ten. In China the Oxford Advanced Learner's English Chinese Dictionary appeared in its seventh edition. A major new edition of the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary was published and the entire Australian dictionary collection was rebranded to mark the branch's centenary year in 2008. The Oxford Companion to Australian Politics was also published, to commercial and critical success. In Malaysia, dictionary publishing highlights include the Kamus Fajor Malay-Malay-English dictionary for primary students and the Oxford Compact Advanced Learner's English-Malay dictionary. The arrival of the 1400 page illustrated English-English-Hindi dictionary was a major publishing event in India. On a much more modest scale the Oxford Photo Dictionary English-Pashto edition appeared in Pakistan.
Higher Education is an important publishing area for OUP, with strong lists in the UK, USA, and in many international markets.
It has been a year of exciting new HE-publishing in the UK, with the launch of a cluster of new business textbooks and titles going into our New Directions series in law.
We have added newsfeeds and podcasts to the range of materials available to support lecturers and students on our Online Resource Centres (book-specific accompanying web sites). Some recent innovative features include an author talking through the diagrams in Chen-Wishart's Contract Law, and a virtual field course incorporating video, audio, and data spreadsheets to support Beeby and Brennan's First Ecology.
In Business we published a number of first editions including Wetherly and Otter's The Business Environment and Henry's Understanding Strategic Management. In March we published Baines, Fill and Page's Marketing. This first year text on principles of marketing is supported by a full online package including videos of practitioners and interviews with leading marketing academics. We have published a number of new texts and new editions on our Politics, International Relations, and Sociology lists. The fourth edition of the world-leading text The Globalization of World Politics by Baylis, Smith and Owens, was published in December. In Sociology a third edition of Bryman's Social Research Methods was published in four-colour for the first time.
In Science, Medicine and Dentistry we published a new edition of Mann and
Trusswell's Essentials of Human Nutrition, and Mitchell's Introduction to Orthodontics. First editions include De Franco's Immunity and Danchin's Behavioural Ecology.
In the US we published a number of key books, both new and revised, including the launch of Houlahan's From Sound to Symbol in Music Fundamentals and new editions of Adler's Understanding Human Communication (our single highest-selling text); Fedler's Reporting for the Media; Ehrman's New Testament; and Newnan's Engineering Economic Analysis - all market leaders. We also published some established books new to OUP and acquired from other publishers: McKee Biochemistry; Spiegel World Politics in a New Era; and Reid Crime and Criminology.
Our International Division branch offices continue to contribute significant texts to this area of our publishing programme. In Canada two major new English titles were published: Communicating for Results and Writing by Choice. The new edition of the Concise Introduction to World Religions became the leading world religion text in the country. In Malaysia we published five titles in the area of Allied Health Sciences for use at Masterskills College, the largest private nursing college in the country. Australian Family Law: The Contemporary Context was quickly established as the leading textbook in the field. In Mexico seven new law texts were published as well as new editions of six bestsellers, consolidating all publishing in Spanish. South Africa published sixteen HE textbooks including two new titles: Educational Management and Leadership and Managing South African Tourism. Pakistan produced textbooks in psychology, professional engineering and a new textbook Understanding Human Rights through English Language Education. Finally in India our rapid expansion into local HE publishing continued with the arrival of thirty new and revised textbooks, predominantly in engineering and management.
OUP is the leading phonics publisher in the UK, and so was well-positioned to grow this part of our literacy business as demand for phonics materials in the market also grew. Our established phonics lists Read Write Inc and Oxford Reading Tree's phonics strand Songbirds continued to perform well. We also added a new character-driven phonics offering into the Reading Tree, Floppy's Phonics, which has been warmly received by the market. We developed a new digital resource Oxford Reading Tree Magic Page which supports this key brand and reinforces its position at the heart the primary classroom.
At the secondary level, 2008 sees the introduction of a new curriculum for both A level and Key Stage 3. We have published for both sectors across our five areas of publishing focus: English, Maths, Geography, Modern Languages and Science. The vertical integration of awarding bodies and publishers (either through exclusive endorsement arrangements or joint ownership) continues to pose a challenge for us. We are, however, pleased to be OCR's preferred partner for its modern languages and English specifications, and we have obtained endorsement from Edexcel this year for our geography and maths A level resources. OxBox CD-ROMs have been created for all our courses. These provide a resource management system for lesson planning, classroom content and assessment. Their flexibility and ease of use have been welcomed by teachers.
Oxford Education has recently developed a programme of resources to support teachers and learners following a UK-style curriculum in international schools. As part of this development we are working in partnership with the International Baccalaureate Organisation to provide materials for its courses.
In our children's fiction list we published a new edition of Pippi Longstocking illustrated by Lauren Child to mark the centenary of Astrid Lindgren's birth. We also launched a new series, Oxford Children's Classics, in a small hardback format. The series includes titles such as Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, and Anne of Green Gables. Co-edition highlights included the picture book Oh Boris, which was translated into ten languages. We re-branded our School Dictionary list in summer 2007 and saw an increase in sales both in the high street and direct to schools.
In Spain, the fourth level of two secondary courses that came out in 2006, English Alive! and High Score, were published. in Oxford Educación, new courses were published in the following secondary subject areas: Spanish language & literature, mathematics, technology, geography & history, biology & geology and French.
Highlights of the International Division's schools
publishing include:
INDIA CHINA SOUTH AFRICA AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND CANADA MALAYSIA MEXICO KENYA PAKISTAN TANZANIA
ELT Publishing celebrated a number of significant anniversaries in 2007, including the twenty-first year of Headway, our flagship course for adult learners and the sixtieth anniversary of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
Overall, it was a busy year for ELT publishing. In the Adult area we published special editions of Headway for the German market, and the New English File series continued to grow with the publication of the Upper Intermediate level and iPacks for the series, published at three levels. These are ELT's first products specifically designed for the digital classroom, to be used with computers, data projectors, and interactive whiteboards.
Our major launch in the Adult area was the publication of three levels of English for Life, by established author Tom Hutchinson. The series is already off to a good start and is appealing to adult students in countries throughout the world. On the Business and English for Special Purposes list, we published a second level of Business one:one and launched Express, a new ten-title series of short, modular courses. We also added four new titles to the Oxford English for Careers series covering nursing, technology, commerce, and tourism.
In Schoolbooks publishing, as well as a third edition of Project, this year also saw the launch of the third edition of Bookworms. Now with a radical new cover design, the integration of a number of diverse strands, and new titles such as World Stories, the series reflects the importance of English as an international language.
Primary continues to offer strong potential for growth as English is introduced into the curriculum at an increasingly young age. Our new course, Incredible English, is our first to respond to the growing trend in primary teaching for content and language integrated learning (CLIL), and has had a strong start in the market.
In Italy, our market share in the lower Secondary sector went up for the tenth year running, with the launch of Smart English producing the best result we have ever achieved for a new secondary course in Italy. We also continued to build share in the upper Secondary part of the market, with Horizons continuing to perform very strongly. Treetops, the primary course for Italy, is now complete at five levels and is market leader in this segment.
This time last year we were facing a particular challenge with a potential change in the adoption system in Poland. However, New Adventures performed very well in the lower Secondary sector, as did our new upper secondary course for Poland, Matura Solutions. A new edition of English Zone for upper Primary has consolidated our position in this segment. The new edition of the Repetytorium exam crammer, Excellence for Matura, continues to out-perform the competition.
Despite the increasingly widespread implementation of gratuidad, state-funded purchase of textbooks, Spain continues to be a successful market for us. The number of children learning English aged three to five continues to grow as more regions make English an official part of the school curriculum. We published a number of new components for our popular Teddy's Train and Three in a Tree kindergarten series in order to provide teachers with more flexible teaching packages.
In Spanish Primary, we launched a major new six-level course, Surprise, for six to eleven year-olds. Based around stories, and with a strong cross-curricular focus, it has been enthusiastically received by the market. In Secondary, we completed the launch of English Alive!, our four-level series for twelve to sixteen year olds and also published regional editions of our best-selling Spotlight series for Andalusia, Valencia and the Canary Islands.
In Portugal, we published the second level of our Bright Lights series for twelve to fifteen year olds, and have gained a strong foothold in the developing Primary market with Zap and Zabadoo.
During the year, the AMELT team in New York launched the new Step Forward programme for learners of English in Adult Basic Education programmes in the USA, under the series direction of Jayme Adelson-Goldstein, with extremely successful results across all regions of the United States. We also launched Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context by Cheryl Zimmerman.
For international markets in American English we had an extremely successful launch of the Smart Choice programme by Ken Wilson, a four-skills course for secondary and adult learners in American English in Asia and Latin America. We also launched the complete third edition of Let's Go, the world's best-selling American English course for children.
This was a big year for ELT Exams publishing. Revisions to two of the main Cambridge ESOL exams (FCE and CAE) meant that we had to renew some of our titles in the Masterclass series at the same time as bringing out new titles for FCE and CAE in the Result series. We also brought out our second Tactics for TOEIC title in close collaboration with ETS, Princeton. In addition, we were busy preparing a new website, oxfordenglishtesting.com, for its launch in February 2008. The website, our first venture into online sales direct to customers, is dedicated to delivering online exam practice tests.
Our Teacher Development group published a number of important titles including: Language Learner Strategies (Cohen & Macaro), Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (Dörnyei), Complex Systems and applied Linguistics (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron), English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity (Jenkins), Discourse Analysis (Widdowson), and Oxford ESOL Handbook (Scheliekens).
The focus in Grammar publishing this year was on market-specific products. Spring saw the publication of Swan and Walter's Good Grammar Book for Italy designed to increase our significant market share opened up by Grammar Spectrum for Italian students. We also published Grammar Spectrum for Portuguese students and expanded our options for Oxford Practice Grammar - Basic by producing versions for both Germany and the Czech Republic. For Spain our contribution was a Gramatica Oxford - Primaria to respond to the need for grammars at this lower level.
ELT Dictionaries publishing highlights included the new edition of the Oxford
Student's Dictionary, written specially for learners using English to study other subjects in CLIL and bilingual programmes. There was also a second edition of our Oxford Escolar dictionary for Brazil, which has now reached lifetime sales of over 1 million copies.
Once again ELT published a large number of new media and video products to support our core print publishing, including 134 title specific CD-ROMs, 90 websites and 27 title specific broadcast quality video programmes.
We published major new titles in all our core areas. To our award-winning backlist of easy instrumental titles, we added two new series: Pianoworks, a new piano tutor for older beginners by Jan and Alan Bullard, and Creative Clarinet, a series for beginner clarinettists. We added three new titles to Voiceworks, our critically acclaimed songbooks series: Junior Voiceworks 2, Folk Voiceworks, and Popular Voiceworks. This series has been highly recommended by Howard Goodall, leader of the government's new national singing programme aimed at schools across the UK. We also published new titles in the Walton Edition and the Oxford Music Education Series, including a typically polemical joust on instrumental teaching by series editor Janet Mills, who sadly died last year.
In January 2008 we launched The Oxford Book of Flexible Anthems with a workshop led by John Rutter at the Musician's Church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. This collection skilfully presents flexibly scored arrangements of old and new anthems, in recognition of the difficulty today's church choirs find in recruiting a full complement of singers. The BBC Singers recorded an all-Oxford programme of Bob Chilcott's music, reviewed in The Gramophone as 'a glorious showcase of one of the finest choral composers at work in Britain today'. Two Oxford carols were performed at the Christmas Eve Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge: Alan Bullard's 'Glory to the Christ Child' and an arrangement of 'Ding! Dong!' by Mack Wilberg, the US department's award-winning composer.
2007 saw many performances and recordings of works by Oxford's house composers. Gerald Barry continued to build his international reputation following the success of his new opera Petra von Kant at ENO, and Howard Skempton had a very successful sixtieth birthday year. In May 2007 we launched Oxford Contemporary Repertoire, a new published series of smaller-scale works by our house composers. Last summer an ambitious project to screen Laurence Olivier's film version of Henry V with a live orchestra performing Walton's music was successfully undertaken. 2008 is the 50th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and interest in his music remains as strong as ever. We published a new edition of The Lark Ascending, voted, for the third year running, the nation's top classical work in Classic FM's Hall of Fame.
OUP Delegates
Dr John Hood (The Vice-Chancellor)
OUP Finance Committee
Dr John Hood (The Vice Chancellor)
External Members:
Group Strategy Committee
Dr Henry Reece
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. [new text from here: compare with the 2006/7 version] A review was undertaken during the year to re-examine the Fund and its constituent reserves. The main purpose of the Fund is to manage, in the short and medium term, the impact on the Press, and consequently on the University, of the realisation of material economic and financial risks to the Press. The constituent reserves within the Fund have been re-classified. The Retained Property Reserve was re-named the Strategic Property Reserve, the Number Two Investment Reserve was re-named the University Reserve. The Strategic Property Reserve holds those properties which the Press intends to retain for its use, or to safeguard against future use (in the UK or overseas), and any associated debt. The University Reserve, a Designated Fund, holds assets to the value of certain prospective transfers to the rest of the University. The Effective Operating Reserve remains in place, but now comprises both liquid and liquefiable assets including investment properties.
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 2008 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
Basis of opinion
Opinion (Signed) Deloitte & Touche LLP
02 Foreword by the Vice-Chancellor
03 Report of the Secretary to the Delegates
Geographical Reports:
05 UK
07 Europe
08 USA
09 International
Publishing Reports:
11 Scholarly
13 Professional
14 Journals
15 Reference
16 Higher Education
17 Schools
19 English Language Teaching
20 Music
22 OUP Delegates, Finance and Strategy Committees
Financial Reports:
23 Preamble. Note paragraph (d)
24 Abstracts of the Combined Balance Sheet of the Trading Operations as at 31/3/2008 (+2006/7 figures) plus the year's Combined Results
25 Abstract of the Statement of Recognized Gains and Losses of the Trading Operations for the year ended 31/3/2008 (+2006/7 figures)
26 Abstract the Combined Balance Sheet of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund as at 31/3/2008 (+2006/7 figures)
27 Abstract of the Combined Statement of Financial Activities of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund for the year to 31/3/2008 (+2006/7 figures)
28-32 List of prizes awarded during 2007/08 (not transcribed)
33-52 List of scholarly and professional books published during 2007/08 (not transcribed)
Comment by Andrew Malcolm
Foreword by the Vice-Chancellor
Vice-Chancellor
University of Oxford
Report of the Secretary to the Delegates
Secretary to the Delegates and Chief Executive
Oxford University Press
Geographical Report: UK
Geographical Report:
Europe
Geographical Report: USA
Geographical Report: International
INDIA
For the first time ever, OUP India, the branch that has experienced the most consistent growth over the past decade, delivered the highest sales of the ten branches that comprise the division. The Indian economy remained buoyant and the government allocated more funds for education at both school and higher education levels. Despite increased competition from international publishers, our market share in school and higher education increased while our academic publishing continued to flourish. There is now considerable depth and breadth in our school list. The branch embarked on a local higher education list just a few years ago and now boasts 50 local titles in core subject areas such as engineering and business.
In China there was little new curriculum implementation during the year and we maintained our sales in the Hong Kong school market. A great deal of effort was devoted to preparing courses for the new junior and secondary curricula which will be introduced in schools from 2009. In mainland China the introduction of a new English curriculum was delayed but we generated stable co-publishing income throughout the year with existing materials. We engaged with several new electronic dictionary partners which helped maintain our strong licensing income profile. Overall we were able to drive modest sales growth in this relatively quiet year while retaining strong co-publishing income and exceeding subsidiary income targets.
Unlike the previous few years, only one grade of new curriculum was introduced in the school market in South Africa. Fortunately we achieved good market share with our materials for the new grade 12 curriculum. Funding remained strong, if erratic, in the rest of the school market, and we experienced particularly good school sales in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, thus driving an increase in overall school sales in this branch. We continued to invest in local higher education publishing and are making gains in this stable but highly competitive area. Next year we will enter the local law market with several core textbooks. Our range of bilingual school dictionaries grew with the publication of new dictionaries for several age levels.
OUP Australia and New Zealand performed well in the primary, secondary, and higher education markets. Growth in all market sectors was driven by new local product. During the year we significantly invested in local publishing, with the first of a new generation of Oxford publications due in 2008-09 which should produce much higher sales growth in the future. In August we gained a modest list of high school law and commerce titles with the acquisition of the Beazer list. The Australian branch embarked on its centenary celebrations in 2008, and these will produce many opportunities for raising our profile in the market.
There was good all round performance from OUP Canada this year, with all four revenue departments achieving budget and seeing sales growth. This is a good result in a market where the industry generally experienced decline. In particular, our local higher education list experienced remarkable growth. The Canadian dollar hit parity with the US dollar which put pressure on pricing of trade and reference books in particular.
2008 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Oxford Fajar, our Branch in Malaysia. The office celebrated with very good sales results. The budget performance was led by a healthy ministry order following the government's decision to provide free textbooks to all students from 2008. Work began on a local higher education list. The branch also absorbed Singapore into its market.
Mexico posted a spectacular increase in sales over the previous year. There was less political disruption in the country this year which made trading easier, and we also achieved very good sales of school books which had been approved by the Ministry of Education. Imported ELT titles performed well but it was the success of a local ELT course for junior high school students that prompted the branch to decide to invest more in local publishing.
It was a turbulent year in Kenya. Sales were moving well before the major disruption which followed the elections. For a number of weeks we had difficulty accessing the market but as the year drew to a close, sales boomed, thus allowing the branch to exceed its target.
Pakistan was no less turbulent but fortunately the disruption in the market occurred after the main selling season had passed. Our local school list performed particularly well with lots of new courses establishing their place in the private sector.
We published level 5 books for the new primary curriculum. Sales were good in this market that still relies on aid funding. A tender for biology texts in Zanzibar helped drive the sales increase.
ELT enjoyed another successful year across Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa (CAMENA). Sales growth in the Middle East was comfortably into double digits for the fourth year in succession. Since opening a new office in Cairo, sales in Egypt have nearly trebled and, since opening in Dubai, sales in the UAE have more than doubled. We have also seen very encouraging growth in Iran, Libya and Yemen, all of which are now making material contributions to regional results. Efforts to restrict the activities of producers of pirated books remain essential across the region.
Publishing Report: Scholarly
Publishing Report: Professional
Publishing Report: Journals
Publishing Report: Reference
Publishing Report: Higher Education
Publishing Report: Schools
Publishing Report: ELT (English Language Teaching)
Publishing Report: Music
Committees
Dr James Forder (The Senior Proctor)
Professor Marcus Banks (The Junior Proctor)
Dr Paul Coones (The Assessor)
Sir Peter North (Chairman of Finance Committee)
Professor Roger Ainsworth
Sir John Ball
Professor John Barton
Professor Keith Burnett (to 30 September 2007)
Dr Roger Crisp
Dame Kay Davies
Professor Tony Hope
Professor Desmond King
Professor Chris Leaver (to 30 September 2007)
Professor Hermione Lee
Professor Martin Maiden
Professor Ewan McKendrick
Professor Anna Christina Nobre
Professor Christopher Pelling
Mr Bryan Ward-Perkins
Professor Mari Sako (from 1 October 2007)
Professor Paul Slack
Sir John Vickers
Professor Ian Walmsley (from 1 October 2007)
Dr James Forder (The Senior Proctor)
Sir Peter North (Chair)
Professor Desmond King
Professor Roger Ainsworth
Professor Paul Slack
Sir John Vickers
Dr Henry Reece (Secretary)
Mr David Gillard (Group Finance Director)
Ms Susan Froud (Managing Director of International Division)
Mr Peter Marshall
(Managing Director of ELT Division)
Mr Tim Barton
(President of OUP USA)
Miss Ros Hedley Miller
Mr David Levin
Ms Charlotte Hogg
Sir James Crosby
Mr Tim Barton
Ms Susan Froud
Mr David Gillard
Ms Kate Harris
Mr Jesus Lezcano Garcia
Mr Peter Marshall
Mr Martin Richardson
Financial Reports
Abstract of the Accounts of the Trading Operations and the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund of Oxford University Press for the year ended 31 March 2008
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.
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.
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.
Chartered Accountants and Registered Auditors
Gatwick, UK
Abstract of the Combined Balance Sheet of the Trading Operations as at 31 March 2008
Year ended
31/3/2008
Year ended
31/3/2007
£m £m £m £m Fixed Assets Tangible Assets 20.9 19.1 Intangible Assets . 23.9 31.3 Investments 0.5 0.5 45.3 50.9 Current Assets Stocks and work-in-progress 73.3 65.9 Debtors 104.8 94.2 Current Asset Investments 173.2 122.9 Bank balances & cash 19.6 29.5 370.9 312.5 Less: Current Liabilities Creditors 124.6 126.0 Taxation 8.1 6.3 Bank loans and overdrafts 3.4 2.5 136.1 134.8 Net Current Assets 234.8 177.7 Total Assets less Current Liabilities 280.1 228.6 Less: Creditors due after one year 2.7 3.0 Provisions for Liabilities and Charges 1.2 1.2 Net Assets excluding Pension Deficit 276.2 224.4 Pension Deficit (38.1) (48.8) Net Assets including Pension Deficit 238.1 175.6 Capital Employed Accumulated Fund and Reserves 236.8 174.4 Minority Interests 1.3 1.2 238.1 175.6 Abstract of the Combined Results of the Trading Operations for the year ended 31 March 2008
Year ended 31/3/2008 Year ended 31/3/2007
£'000 [mistake for £m? - A.M] £'000
Turnover 492.3 453.1
Profit for year before tax 83.7 78.0
Tax (6.3) (6.9)
Profit after Tax 77.4 71.1
Profit attributable
to minority interests (0.2) -
Net Profit for the year 77.2 71.1
The above results relate to continuing operations
Abstract of the Statement of Recognized Gains and Losses of the Trading Operations for the year ended 31 March 2008
Year ended 31/3/2008 Year ended 31/3/2007
£m £m
Net Profit for the financial year 77.2 71.1
Actuarial Gains on Group Pension Scheme 11.2 12.5
Currency Translation Differences on Foreign
Currency Net investments 4.0 (12.0)
Total Recognized Gains and Losses Relating to the year 92.4 71.6
Actuarial Gains/Losses on Group Pension Scheme
Difference between actual and expected return on scheme assets (26.8) (4.7)
Experience gains/losses arising on scheme liabilities - 11.4
Effects of changes in assumptions underlying the present
value of scheme liabilities 38.0 5.8
11.2 12.5
Abstract of the Combined Balance Sheet of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund as at 31 March 2008
2008
Strategic
Property
Reserve
£m2008
Effective
Operating
Reserve
(General
Funds)
£m2008
Effective
Operating
Reserve
(Designated
Funds)
£m2008
University
Reserve
£m2008
Total
£m2007
Total
£m Fixed Assets Tangible Fixed Assets 59.5 34.3 - - 93.8 77.5 Investments 5.3 25.3 - 126.4 157.0 166.5 64.8 59.6 - 126.4 250.8 244.0 Current Assets Debtors 0.6 0.6 - - 1.2 10.1 Cash 1.6 - - - 1.6 14.0 2.2 0.6 - - 2.8 24.1 Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year (1.0) - - (0.6) (1.6) (12.0) Net Current (Liabilities)/Assets 1.2 0.6 - (0.6) 1.2 12.1 Total Assets less current liabilities 66.0 60.2 - 125.8 252.0 256.1 Creditors: Amounts falling due after one year (18.5) - - - (18.5) (19.2) Net Assets 47.5 60.2 - 125.8 233.5 236.9 Reconciliation of Funds Opening Balance 61.1 64.3 26.0 85.5 236.9 235.9 Net movement in funds (13.6) (4.1) (26.0) 40.3 (3.4) 1.0 47.5 60.2 - 125.8 233.5 236.9
Abstract of the Combined Statement of Financial Activities of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund for the year ended 31 March 2008
2008
Trading
Properties
Retention
Reserve
£m2008
Effective
Operating
Reserve
(General Funds)
£m2008
Effective
Operating
Reserve
(Designated Funds)
£m 2007
Number
Two
Investment
Fund
£m 2008
Total
£m2007
Total
£m Incoming Resources from generated funds ACTIVITIES FOR GENERATING FUNDS: Rental income from properties 14.6 - - - 14.6 14.2 Income from investments - 2.7 - 2.9 5.6 5.6 Transfer from Trading Operations - - - 30.0 30.0 30.0 Total Incoming Resources 14.6 2.7 - 32.9 50.2 49.8
Resources Expended COST OF GENERATING FUNDS: Transfer of funds to the rest of the University: - Cash - - - (56.0) (56.0) (46.6) - Benefits in kind - - - (0.8) (0.8) (0.8) Other Resources Expended (9.2) (0.6) - - (9.8) (9.9) Total Resources Expended (9.2) (0.6) - (56.8) (66.6) (57.3) Net Incoming/(Outgoing) Resources before Transfers 5.4 2.1 - (23.9) (16.4) (7.5) Transfer between Funds (35.0) (4.2) (26.0) 65.2 - - Net Incoming/(Outgoing) Resources for the year (29.6) (2.1) (26.0) 41.3 (16.4) (7.5) Other Recognised Gains/(Losses) Investment losses - (2.0) - (1.0) (3.0) (0.1) Investment gains - - - - - 6.5 Surplus on revaluation of investment properties 16.1 - - - 16.1 2.5 Currency translation differences on foreign currency net investments (0.1) - - - (0.1) (0.4) Net Movement in Funds (13.6) (4.1) (26.0) 40.3 (3.4) 1.0 Reconciliation of Funds Total Funds Brought Forward 61.1 64.3 26.0 85.5 236.9 235.9 Total Funds Carried Forward 47.5 60.2 - 125.8 233.5 236.9 The above results relate to continuing operations