Oxford University Press: Annual report of the Delegates, 2008/2009

Contents (printed page numbering)

02 Foreword by the Vice-Chancellor
03 Report of the Secretary to the Delegates
Geographical Reports:
07 UK
09 Europe
10 USA
11 International
Publishing Reports:
13 Scholarly
15 Professional
16 Journals
17 Reference
18 Higher Education
19 Schools
21 English Language Teaching
23 Music
24 OUP Delegates, Finance and Strategy Committees
Financial Reports:
25 Preamble
26 Abstracts of the Combined Balance Sheet of the Trading Operations as at 31/3/2009 (+2007/8 figures) plus the year's Combined Results
27 Abstract of the Statement of Recognized Gains and Losses of the Trading Operations for the year ended 31/3/2009 (+2007/8 figures)
28 Abstract the Combined Balance Sheet of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund as at 31/3/2009 (+2007/8 figures)
29 Abstract of the Combined Statement of Financial Activities of the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund for the year to 31/3/2009 (+2007/8 figures)
30-36 List of prizes awarded during 2008/09 (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.

This is my last foreword to an Annual Report of the Delegates of the University Press. During my five years as Chairman of the Delegates I have witnessed directly the extremely valuable work that the Press carries out in its fulfilment of the University's objective of disseminating education, scholarship, and research. In previous years I have highlighted the ambassadorial role played by the Press around the world, along with the symbiotic relationship between the Press and other University departments. The reputation of the University around the world is directly influenced by the work of all of us within the University. Our Press colleagues take this responsibility very seriously, and carry out their work with a great deal of commitment and pride. I saw this at first hand in September last year, when I was present at an event in Johannesburg to mark a new partnership between OUP in South Africa and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation which will provide educational scholarships for South Africans.

The breadth of the Press's publishing, and its consistently high standards, continues to enable people of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds to further their education. The success with which the Press achieves the University's goals through its publishing has led to tremendous growth, which in turn has generated a surplus that the Press and wider University have used in a number of important ways. Last year I wrote about the success of the Clarendon Scholarship Fund in attracting the best international postgraduate researchers to Oxford. Another Press-funded scheme, the John Fell OUP Research Fund, provides grants for early-stage research projects, interdisciplinary research, and young researchers early in their careers. Since its launch in 2006 the scheme has received £15m in funds from the Press, and has provided backing for more than 500 research projects in virtually all subject areas, ranging from an investigation into the pathophysiology of fatal malaria to a study of the 'dark energy' that drives the acceleration of the universe. This is another example of how the Press makes a real difference to Oxford's ability to maintain its position as one of the leading universities in the world.

Sir John Ball retired as Delegate for Mathematics in September 2008 after ten years' service. His contributions were always as telling as they were brief, and his commitment to mathematics scholarship and education served the Press extremely well. He is succeeded by Frances Kirwan. Sir Peter North retired as Chairman of Finance Committee after 15 years as a Delegate. His wise counsel as Vice Chancellor, Law Delegate, and Chairman of Finance Committee was extremely important in guiding the Press through a critical period in its history.

It seems fitting to end this foreword by expressing the University's thanks to Dr Henry Reece, who is retiring as Secretary to the Delegates in August 2009, a position that he has held for 11 years. His commitment to the Press's core mission, and to ensuring that the Press maintained the highest standards across its many businesses around the world, has always been impressive. He leaves Oxford University Press firmly established as a leading scholarly and educational publisher, and with its position as the world's pre-eminent university press consolidated.

Dr John Hood
Vice-Chancellor
University of Oxford

Last year I began my commentary with the caution that we would face tougher trading conditions in 2008/09. Regrettably, this prediction turned out to be accurate. The impact of the economic downturn began to be felt around September 2008, particularly in the US retail market; the UK consumer market weakened noticeably in the last quarter of the year, and there have been some early indications of reduced institutional library spending as universities face financial cut-backs.

The impact of these developments has been felt acutely in some of the Press's markets and mildly, so far, in others. All seven publishing Divisions now face the task of attempting to predict the severity of the downturn, and its longer-term consequences across all our major markets, and planning how to adapt. The good news is that at Group level the Press's underlying trading momentum has not as yet been seriously damaged by economic conditions. The Press has less exposure than many publishers to the trade market, and our broad geographic spread provides a degree of protection, as does an extremely diverse academic and educational publishing programme. We have also developed a culture of careful management of costs, which has allowed us to preserve investment in key publishing programmes. The less good news is that falls in asset values increased the size of the deficit in the UK pension scheme, and led to equity-related losses in the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund.

Sales last year were £578.7m, an increase of 4.8 percent over the previous year on a like-for-like basis, and in line with our expectations at the start of the year. On a headline basis, using year-end rates of exchange and not adjusting for the effects of currency movements, the increase was 17.6 per cent. The considerable difference between these two figures is testament to the decline in sterling's value during the year against the US dollar and the euro in particular. Comparable rates of organic sales growth in the three preceding years were 5.4, 6.5, and 5.4 per cent. It is important for the University's object to disseminate scholarship and education as widely as possible that the Press continues to grow. Such growth enables us to support many activities, including the extension of our global reach, and during the year we approved the opening of new offices in Serbia, Latvia, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia, Peru, and Ecuador.

Of all the Press's Divisions, OUP USA has had the toughest year. Despite the continuing growth and success of our online publishing, the institutional market for print materials has been hit very badly, with sales of imported academic titles suffering disproportionately. At the same time the retail market was severely affected by the downturn in consumer spending.

During the year we restructured our US business in order to position it better for what we believe will be a tough few years, with financial pressure on universities likely to result in substantial cut-backs in library funding. That said, there are several success stories worth highlighting. The quality of our academic publishing remains as high as ever, with four of the most prestigious publishing awards in the US going to OUP USA titles, including the Pulitzer Prize for History for the latest volume in the Oxford History of the United States, Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The transformation of America, 1815-1848. Our Higher Education and Medical publishing performed very well, and we continued to extend the Press's reach through significant rights deals - every Apple Mac computer in the world now comes with a preloaded Oxford dictionary.

The UK Academic Division had another excellent year of publishing, but saw two very different pictures in terms of its sales. In the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world, sales of both print and online materials were strong, but sales into the US market, especially of print monographs, declined steeply. Among many publishing highlights was a prestigious two-volume collection of essays in honour of Nobel prize-winning economist and former Press Delegate - Amartya Sen's 75th birthday. Arguments for a Better World was launched at an event in India at which the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, described the book as "a truly remarkable endeavour by any measure".

The Press offers a growing online collection of scholarly, reference, and research resources, and I would like to single out some significant successes in this area. Oxford Scholarship Online was launched something of an experiment (sic) in 2003 and was slow to gain market acceptance. It has now achieved both market success and considerable scale, with more than 2500 titles across 16 major subject areas. Access to a vast range of our online reference resources is now available across 90 per cent of the UK to public library card holders, both within libraries and remotely from their homes, through the UK network of public libraries. The Oxford Journals Digital Archive, which contains more than 3 million research article pages from 151 journals going back to 1849, is now available in 1,238 institutions across 23 countries. The Press is able to achieve additional dissemination in the poorest countries of the world by offering free online access to a wide range of these resources, with 850 institutions across 43 countries receiving free access to the Oxford Journals Collection, and academic institutions in 27 countries receiving resources including the OED Online and Oxford Reference Online.

Oxford Journals had another strong year of growth. The list has grown to 235 titles, and last year we won more contracts to publish prestigious learned society journals than we had in the previous two years. It is important to highlight the high regard in which the academic community holds our stable of journals, which is a direct result of high quality, preparedness to experiment with open access models, and fair pricing. Online usage of our journals continues to grow, with research article downloads reaching 71 million, a 15 per cent increase over the previous year.

The International Division achieved impressive sales growth for the tenth year in succession, with most of its impetus coming from schools publishing. There were particularly noteworthy performances in India (yet again), Pakistan, Mexico, and Tanzania. In Hong Kong we gained high ministry approval rates for our submissions for the new curriculum for 2009/10; in Australia we saw the first publishing from our new team there with the Oxford Literacy primary course and the Big Ideas secondary courses; and in South Africa we won a prestigious award for the English-Afrikaans School Dictionary for its contribution to the development of the Afrikaans language. Our Higher Education publishing is relatively small but growing very rapidly, with six of the International Division branches (Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Malaysia) now publishing titles for local HE institutions and students. We celebrated the centenary of OUP in Australia during the year.

The Press's publishing for schools is carried out in several locations and by three Divisions: through International Division branches for local markets and in local languages; through OUP España in Spanish for local schools; and through the UK-based Oxford Education Division (Oxed), the largest of our schools publishers. Once again, market conditions were challenging with an unprecedented degree of curriculum change in UK secondary schools. Within this context we performed relatively well, and our A level titles were particularly successful. We continue to build our portfolio of distinguished primary literacy schemes. The Oxford Reading Tree is as popular today as it has ever been; more than 80 per cent of UK schools continue to buy the books and their accompanying digital resources. We also publish the leading synthetic phonics course for the market, and last year we launched an innovative new reading scheme, Project X, with a flurry of media interest. Born out of research into why so many boys struggle with learning to read, the project includes many 'boy-friendly' characteristics while maintaining sound pedagogical foundations. Its publication illustrates our commitment to education as the ladder of opportunity. Oxed's international publishing had an extremely successful year with one highlight being the provision of resources for the textbook programme instigated by the Ministry of Education in Ghana.

ELT publishing had another excellent year. We maintain a leading position in British English publishing, and continue to build our profile in American English. Through both programmes, we estimate that we now educate 16 million students with our ELT materials around the world. We also strive to support teachers - currently over 600,000 worldwide - with an ever-growing range of print and digital resources. There was strong sales growth across the Division, with both mature and emerging markets contributing to that growth: Western and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, Brazil, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam all performed particularly well. The Division continues to open offices in more countries around the world, with offices in more than 100 countries and several more planned for the coming year. Two publishing highlights of the year were the launch of My Oxford English, a major adult distance-learning product jointly produced by ELT and OUP España, for launch by OUPE in the Spanish market, and the publication of the Division s first fully online product, Oxford English Testing, which provides interactive English language practice tests for sale to students around the world.

Although Spain has been badly hit by the economic downturn, OUP España had another good year. The Division has grown significantly in recent years by maintaining a market-leading position in ELT and growing a very successful local schools programme. Market developments are not, however, working in favour of publishers as parental purchase of textbooks declines and state-funded purchase becomes widespread. To reach a wider audience with its ELT materials, OUP España launched My Oxford English last year. This is a media-rich interactive 10-level course designed for Spanish adult students, available in both online and DVD-ROM formats. It is supported by a range of services, most significantly an Oxford University-accredited examination to be launched in early 2010. This is the first time that the Press and the rest of the University have collaborated on an initiative of this kind.

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 £82.0m in 2007/08 to £86.8m in 2008/09. The Press continued its strong performance in cash generation, converting well over 100 per cent of the surplus into cash.

The generation of a surplus is a by-product of the Press's professional, effective, and efficient fulfilment of its mission to further the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Given the difficult economic circumstances that we currently face, it should not be expected that this level of surplus generation will necessarily continue but thus far it has enabled the Press to support a range of extremely important investments. In the last decade the Press has invested £60m in new editions of the OED and the ODNB; has been able to acquire and nourish significant copyrights such as the Grove dictionaries of music and art; has pioneered online initiatives like Oxford Scholarship Online; and has developed scores of schools and ELT courses that have dramatically improved the quality of education on offer to millions of children worldwide. At a time when many of our fellow university presses in the USA are experiencing very difficult conditions, we are grateful that our size and geographical spread will allow us to continue to provide opportunities for the dissemination of the highest quality scholarship and education.

The Press continues to make substantial transfers to the rest of the University, and over the last 11 years has transferred £478m. Although the Press has made a number of "special" transfers, the core of the transfer is calculated on the combined results of the Trading Operations and the Delegates' Property and Reserve Fund. The transfers are set out here over this period. The University continues to make excellent use of these transfers for a variety of important activities, and I would like to highlight four here. The Clarendon Scholarships Fund, which now receives £7.5m per annum, continues to attract some of the best international postgraduate researchers to Oxford, and has so far supported more than 800 students. The John Fell OUP Research Fund, which receives £5m per annum, continues to support early stage research, and has provided both large and small grants to hundreds of researchers and their teams. The refurbishment of the New Bodleian and the purchase of the Radcliffe Infirmary site, the potential of which, now that demolition is well-advanced, we can begin to appreciate, complete the list. The Press is extremely proud to support these initiatives across the rest of the University. The regular annual subvention will be £25.9m.

This is my last annual report after 11 years as Chief Executive of the Press. Over the years I have often written about the Press's sales growth and its ability to generate a surplus; these are an important consequence of our activity, because they enable the Press to do what it exists to do, but they are only a part of the story. What I have also emphasized is the central importance of top quality publishing, upon which all else depends. I have always believed that the Press's publishing has sustained such high levels of quality because it is informed by an ingrained belief in the Press as a department of the University, and by a conviction that what the Press does furthers the University's work in research, scholarship, and education - indeed in ways that go beyond what the rest of the University can do. We seek to be no less efficient as a business than commercial publishers but we are in pursuit of very different ends. The Press's success has been built on the very best publishing, and that publishing in turn has been informed by a belief that what we do matters. That commitment to the values of the University, to the notion that scholarship and education matter hugely, is what will ensure that the Press continues to flourish.

THIS YEAR WAS much better than the last for Academic division sales into the UK books market. Within a very tough retail environment, a number of traditional retailers, online retailers, and wholesalers showed strong sales growth for OUP books sales, with many having a particularly impressive last quarter. The library suppliers fared less well, showing a decline on the previous year. Two contributory reasons are the decline in library print budgets and the absence of RAE-driven publishing, which bolstered last year's sales.

The Academic Division's overall sales performance was strong in the UK market. Both Law and Medicine performed well, supported by some key publishing and good sales into the corporate market. UK Trade sales have been good this year, due in part to some notable publishing: Defiance, which became a major film in 2008, and The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing edited by Richard Dawkins. The Oxford World's Classics rebrand was a great success in the UK, exceeding all expectations and gaining considerable market share.

Academic Division's UK success was once again supported by impressive online products sales. Oxford Scholarship Online performed particularly well, with the global market responding positively to the launch of several new subject modules. The division's online Law products also perforined well, with the online versions of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also having better than expected years.

OUP's online reference resources are available extensively through UK public libraries. Ninety per cent of libraries in the UK now offer access to a package of online reference works including the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and Oxford Reference Online. Many of these libraries also provide access to Who's Who, Oxford Language Dictionaries online and the 'Grove' Dictionaries of Art and Music. Public library ticket holders can access these resources from their own homes, via remote access facilities, as well as from libraries.

Despite weakening library budgets, Academic print sales also witnessed solid growth, supported by the continued development of publishing in the Oxford Handbooks series, including the publication of the first history book in the series. Although the UK print dictionary and reference market has been tough this year, OUP has strengthened its position as the market leader for English dictionaries, thesauruses, and combined editions. This year saw the publication of the new edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, along with the rebranded Take-Off In language learning series.

UK Higher Education sales have been strong with above market levels of sales growth; the Business and Law lists did particularly well.

The UK Primary schools market has seen a small decline in spending on Maths and English resources, and free government publishing has to some extent depressed the phonics market. The biggest impact however has inevitably come from the economic downturn which hit schools in the third quarter of last year. Despite the difficult market conditions, Oxed's Primary business had a strong last-quarter, and increased its overall market share. Several fresh publishing initiatives have contributed to this, including extensions to two well-established literacy programmes, Oxford Reoding Tree and Read Write Inc., and the launch of Project X.

Last year witnessed unprecedented curriculum change in the UK Secondary schools sector. At Key Stage 3 (11-14 year olds), Oxed increased its market share in several subject areas, despite some of those markets witnessing overall decline. The Key Stage 4 market (14-16 year olds) dipped sharply ahead of the introduction of new GCSE syllabuses. Science was particularly impacted, although Oxed's Science publishing held up rather better than the rest of the market.

Macro economic conditions precipitated a downturn in high street sales for Oxed's trade children's lists last year. However, direct sales to consumers through book clubs and 'special' sales customers remained more buoyant, and growth through internet retailers continued.

The UK market for English Language Teaching has held up well. Growth in the private language school sector more than compensated for ongoing uncertainties surrounding government funding for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages).

ACADEMIC DIVISION HAS SEEN excellent sales growth across Europe in most publishing areas. Higher Education, Law, Medicine, and Academic & Trade all had a particularly strong year, with the latter being buoyed by sales of the Oxford's World Classics series in its rebranded form and the continuing success of the Very Short Introduction series. Bilingual dictionaries are also selling well across Europe. Sales have been particularly good in the Nordic countries and Benelux, where they have grown through a range of channels. The trend for existing online customers taking market share from traditional retailers continues. Germany had a very good year with excellent sales to Amazon.de. Sales in Eastern Europe and Iberia were less buoyant than in previous years, largely attributable to the difficult economic conditions across these regions.

ELT continued to win market share and deliver double-digit sales growth. OUP remains the preferred provider of materials across Europe to support the teaching of English. Another excellent performance in Italy was driven by the continued success of publishing programmes for primary, secondary and adult education. In Spain the market for ELT schoolbooks grew, along with the publishing output of OUP's major competitors. In spite of increasing competition, OUP continues to grow its market share and maintain its market-leading position. The year also saw encouraging progress in Greece, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Across Eastern Europe the Division enjoyed double-digit growth in almost every market as a combination of EU expansion and enhanced government funding encouraged students to study English in both private language and state school sectors. While Poland stands out for its strong performance, the year was characterised by the consistency of impressive regional results. Despite challenging trading conditions in Russia and Turkey, including local restrictions on international publishers, both territories delivered healthy results.

Spain's Primary and Secondary schools markets continue to be affected by a programme of educational reforms: substantial textbook changes, the rapid growth of ICT in the classroom, and the demand for digital products are providing many opportunities to extend OUP Españia's local publishing programme.

Journals subscription sales to institutional libraries saw strong growth in Europe. In Germany a new national agreement was signed providing higher education, government and publicly funded research institutions, state and regional libraries, and universities with online access to both the Oxford Journals Collection and Archive. Over 2.5 million academics, researchers, and students throughout Germany will now have online access to this valuable resource.

[Picture caption: The signing of the first corporate contract for My Oxford English in Spain. From left to right: Juan Carlos Sanz, Juan Basilio, Ramón Hernández, Chris Wyburd, Amaya Garcia, and Silvia Bravo.]

OUP USA HAD A CHALLENGING fiscal year due to the unprecedented economic conditions in the wider US economy. September's financial crisis triggered a rapid decrease in consumer spending, with retail sales witnessing a sudden downturn. Numerous independent bookstores were closed: larger chains struggled financially: and all reduced ordering dramatically. The largest accounts, Amazon and Baker & Taylor, underwent major supply chain initiatives which resulted in increased returns and much leaner buying patterns.

Last year also witnessed the continuing trend towards online being the medium of choice for the library community. marked the end of print and electronic 'double dipping' in the library community. The vast majority of customers now buy either the print edition or the e-book, but not both. As a consequence, print reference sales have been hard hit, but online reference sales grew substantially over the previous year, with strong performances from the Digital Reference Shelf programme and Oxford Language Dictionaries Online. Sales of OUP's online monograph service, Oxford Scholarship Online, also increased dramatically, but print monograph sales, especially imports, were hit hard.

It was a strong year for Higher Education, which had above market sales growth. The division saw excellent performances in science, engineering, and communications with new and newly revised titles.

In Medicine, Clinical Medicine sales grew substantially with the new Oxford American Medical Libraries being one specific highlight. Performance in Brain Sciences was less successful, however, after four years of strong growth.

Law underwent a major restructuring, with the goal of refining the publishing strategy and monograph programme sales grew.

OUP USA's rights division finished the year with a strong fourth quarter. Success was due to several major deals by the department, including new partnerships with MyWire, Inventer, and Sterling, renegotiated deals with Apple, EBSCO, Highbeam, Questia, and Vocel, and better than expected performances from key partners such as Handmark, Ingram Digital, the CCC, and Amazon (Kindle).

Oxford Journals continued to sign deals with key US consortia, giving participating libraries access to the entire journals collection. One such deal last year included WALDO, which represents 500 institutions in the north-east USA.

ELT sales in the United States delivered strong growth again this year, even through six months of financial crisis, in which all sectors of the educational system faced dramatic cutbacks in funding and spending. The Division has now seen four years of consecutive sales and market share growth and continues to win business in core ELT territories such as California, Texas, and Illinois.

[Picture caption: At his inauguration ceremony, US President Obama swore his oath on Lincoln's bible, published by Oxford University Press in 1853.]

OUP'S INTERNATIONAL DIVISION (ID) has grown every year since the early 1990s and this continued with another successful year in 2008/09. This growth masked varying performances in the different geographical markets in which ID has a presence. India contributed most to the year-on-year improvement with double-digit growth in its sales. Sales in Pakistan increased by a remarkable amount as a consequence of the change (back) of the start of the academic year from August to April. Other very significant increases came from Mexico and Tanzania, where some special tenders for secondary science textbooks were won in Zanzibar. Australia, Kenya and South Africa also increased their overall sales, although by lesser amounts. China witnessed a year of consolidation before new curriculum implementation in Hong Kong. Malaysia suffered from the absence of the one-off ministry tenders of 2007/08, and the local Schools list performed poorly in Canada.

School sales represent the majority of total ID sales. Almost all of China's sales are of schoolbooks and the Hong Kong market, despite the longer term demographic trends, is still one of the biggest markets for OUP in ID Countries. School sales declined slightly in 2008/09 due to the market awaiting the implementation of the New Senior Secondary (NSS) curriculum in 2009. The Hong Kong Branch dedicated a lot of resource and effort to completing new publishing for the NSS curriculum. Ministry approval rates were high but sales will not result until 2009/10.

OUP is the market leader in the Indian private school sector and has managed to maintain, and in some segments grow, its market share as the market itself has grown. This trend continued in 2008/09, helped by the revision of several key series such as New Broadway. Australia also significantly increased local school publishing during the year as it pushed to gain market share over the coming years. Large increases in school sales were also generated by Pakistan and Mexico (both in ELT and local Spanish school publishing). In other parts of the world, school sales rose and fell, as is usually the case, according to the incidence of one-off tenders. South Africa and Kenya both produced solid year-on-year increases which belie the problems that both Branches had in dealing with the vagaries of educational funding in their respective countries. School sales in Canada dropped last year, partly due to a reduction in overall spending on textbooks in Canada.

Higher Education sales made up a much smaller proportion of total ID sales in than in the previous year, although this is a growing sector of publishing. The highest proportion was in Canada, where HE sales accounted for just under half of total Branch turnover. While sales of imported HE titles are generally stable across ID, local HE sales have grown significantly as the publishing programmes initiated over the last few years have begun to have an impact. Australian and Indian HE publishing grew most in percentage terms, and both Branches now have a solid presence in their targeted HE segments. The Malaysian and South African publishing programmes are more recent and have taken a little longer to become established.

The external environment in 2008/09 was tough for Dictionaries and Trade sales in most parts of the world. Sales were down on the previous year in Canada and Australia, and did not reach their normal levels of growth in India. Overall, ID has followed a policy of reducing exposure to the trade market over recent years and hence found the impact of global economic factors to be limited. The one area of expansion has been bilingual dictionaries. South Africa and India in particular have been successful in publishing a range of dictionaries at both school and adult levels.

Across Branches, sales of imported and locally-published academic titles remained flat during 2008/09. Nevertheless, there were a number of notable publishing highlights in India and Pakistan, the two Branches with local publishing programmes.

ELT sales across CAMENA (Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa) have doubled since the Division began investing in the region in 2005; sales growth delivered through representative offices in Dubai and Cairo has matched and exceeded original expectations. A strong campaign supporting copyright protection remained a feature of ELT's presence in the region and helped towards a ten-fold sales increase in Iran, which is not yet a signatory of the Berne Convention. From Yemen to Kazakhstan to Morocco, more students and teachers are now using Oxford ELT materials than ever before.

In Asia, ELT had strong results in Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, where sales grew well above local market growth rates. OUP Japan won market share and contributed healthy growth despite tough trading conditions. Performance in Thailand was much weaker as a result of local overstocking and political and economic disturbances.

Sales growth in Latin America was once again in high double digits, with OUP Brazil's sustained excellent results continuing to be a major factor in overall regional performance. New publishing for those markets that prefer American English continues to fuel growth outside OUP's traditional strongholds of Chile and Argentina, both of wliich performed well.

The Journals Division achieved double-digit growth in its sales last year, with China standing out as a growth market. Sales of the Oxford Journals Digital Archive continue to make a major contribution to the Division's international success.

[Picture captions: Staff from OUP Australia gathered to celebrate the centenary of the Melbourne office. ELT Division 2008 Asia Sales Conference, hosted in Oxford. Representatives from OUP and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation took part in a ceremony in Johannesburg to mark the acquisition by the MRF of a 25 per cent stake in OUP Southern Africa. From left to right, back row first: Robert Marsh, Neil Tomkins, Susan Reece, Sir Peter North, Dr Henry Reece, Lieze Kotze. Steve Thobela, Dr John Hood, Nelson Mandela, and Professor Jakes Gerwell.]

OUP UK and OUP USA published a wealth of fascinating and critically acclaimed scholarly books last year, several of which won major awards (as detailed in the Prizes and Awards section of this report).

Some highlights from the UK list include: Was Jesus God?, the follow-up to the very successful Is There a God?, from Richard Swinburne, one of the world's leading philosophers; Thinking about Nuclear Weapons, by the late Sir Michael Quinlan; Spying on Ireland, by Eunan Halpin; Between Saying and Doing, by Robert Brandom; Language Anxiety, by Tim Machan, which takes a fresh look at the ever-present anxieties associated with language change; and striking a timely note, Managed by the Markets: How Finance Re-shaped America, by Gerald F. Davis, which provides an excellent account of the backdrop to the current economic crisis.

A very strong line-up of Oxford Handbooks published last year included titles ranging from Fascism to Personnel Psychology and from Archaeology to International Relations. An impressive range of academic reference projects included A. P. Cowie's two-volume Oxford History of English Lexicography and the first volume in the Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines series. A new scholarly edition, The Complete Works of John Milton: Volume II, The 1671 Poems: Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes was published, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers. The year also saw the first volume in a new series containing the selected works of Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, covering Information and Economic Analysis. Towards the end of 2008 a prestigious two-volume collection of essays in honour of Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's 75th birthday, Arguments for a Better World, edited by Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur, appeared.

Highlights on the USA list included: Beverly Gage's The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror; Marshall Goldman's Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia; Marcus Daniels' Scandol and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy; Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food by Pamela C. Ronald and R. W. Adamchak; Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War by Jeffrey Lockwood; Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money, by Christian Smith, Michael Emerson, and Patricia Snell; and William Bloch's The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel.

Oxford Scholarship Online, OUP's online platform for academic monographs, continued to grow. New modules were launched in Music, Law, and Social Work, taking the service to a total of 16 modules, containing the complete texts of 2,557 Oxford books. Subscribers to OSO currently number 697 institutions worldwide.

In both the UK and the USA, OUP publishes a selection of titles which marry intellectual integrity with broader appeal as trade books. Many of the highlights on the UK list centred around the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth, with a high-profile title from leading scientist Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True. New editions in the Oxford World's Classics series include On the Origin of Species, edited by Gillian Beer, and an edition of Darwin's Evolutionary Writings, edited by James A. Secord. Another strong year for new titles in the Very Short Introductions series saw publication of books on a broad range of topics, including Autism by Uta Frith, Science and Religion by Thomas Dixon, Relativity by Russell Stannard, and Statistics by David J. Hand. One of the year's top sellers in the series was Terry Eagleton's The Meaning of Life.

Trade hardbacks published this year included: The Making of Mr Grey's Anatomy by Ruth Richardson; Antimatter by Frank Close; Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 by David Crystal, which takes a look at text-messaging and its effects on literacy, language, and society; Stephen Gundle's Glamour: A History; Roger Scruton's Beauty, which examines key questions such as what beauty is, why it is valued, and whether it is vanishing; and Patricia Fava's Science: A Four Thousand Year History. Trade biographies published during the year included Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns's John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought, described as "a book of permanent value" in the Literary Review, and Duncan Wu's William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man.

Of particular note on the US trade list was Australian anthropologist and counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. Perhaps the best-reviewed book of the year was Donald Worster's A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir. The latest edition to the Oxford History of the United States, George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 also exceeded expectations. A movie tie-in edition of Defiance by Nechama Tec (a book first published by the Press in 1994 and the basis of a film starring Daniel Craig) spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, OUP USA's first national bestseller since David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing in 2004. Other top frontlist performers included Ronald Walker's Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Stephen Hayes's The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson, and Lawrence Tribe's The Invisible Constitution.

The division won several significant awards during the year, including the Pulitzer Prize for History for the latest volume in the Oxford History of the United States, Daniel Walker Howe, What Hoth God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Other awards included the prestigious Lincoln Prize for Craig Symonds' Lincoln and his Admirals, and two major prizes from the Organization of American Historians for What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America by Peggy Pascoe.

Numerous OUP authors were selected to serve in the new Obama administration, most notably former US law delegate Cass Sunstein (head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs), Joseph Nye (ambassador to Japan), and Warren Bass (chief speechwriter and senior policy adviser to Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations). Finally, Barack Obama took the oath of office on a bible published in 1853 by OUP.

OUP Pakistan continued to publish high-quality and extremely topical titles on the role of the Pakistani army in recent times; Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within analyses the turbulent relationship between the army and the Pakistani state and also with its major foreign ally, the US. Other significant titles were: A History of Pastun Migration 1775-2006 which follows Pashtun individuals and communities as they responded to colonial and post-colonial opportunities and challenges; and Back to the Future: The Khanate of Kalat and the Genesis of Baloch Nationalism, 1915-1955 which describes the disintegration of the Baloch Khanate during and immediately after British rule.

In India, Zoya Hasan's Politics of Inclusion: Castes, Minorities and affirmative Action examines the divergence in state policy towards different disadvantaged groups. The Court and Constitution of India: Summits and Shallows is an insider's account of the role of the Supreme Court of India in interpreting the Constitution and formulating contemporary public law. Monetary Policy in a Globalized Economy: A Practitioner's View provides valuable insights into the formation of monetary policy and its evolution in India, up to the current global financial crisis.

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

In the UK the medical books programme enjoyed a good year with the publication of over 140 titles. These included the New Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry 2e, Brain's Diseases of the Nervous System 12e, 26 Oxford Handbooks in Medicine & Nursing (including the hugely successful Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties 8e), and 15 Oxford Specialist Handbooks.

Oxford Specialty Training is a new series and the first to take account of the new training structure and syllabuses. The first two titles, Training in Surgery and Training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, were published in 2008. The series marks an active commissioning programme to support the education and training of junior doctors.

The success of the redesigned Facts series, which provides reliable and authoritative information to patients, their families, and carers on a variety of ailments, continued with publication of over 20 new titles, many of which have been endorsed by patient groups.

In the USA, the Brain Sciences and Clinical Medicine departments combined into one department of Medicine, and published 210 titles during the year including: Iversen, Bloom and Roth's Introduction to Neuropsychopharmacology; Iskandrian's Nuclear Cardiac Imaging 4/e; the second edition of Roberts, Social Workers' Desk Reference; and seven new Pocket Guides to Social Work Research Methods cementing the series as the library for social work researchers. Michaels' Doubt Is Their Product was named one of the top 10 science books of 2008 by the editors of Amazon.com. Social work was added as a module to Oxford Scholarship Online in January.

The UK law programme saw the publication of the New Oxford Companion to the Law, edited by Peter Cane and Joanne Conaghan; and the Oxford Companion to International Criminal Justice, edited by Antonio Cassese. The 68 new titles published on academic law included two new Oxford Handbooks: the Oxford Handbook of International Trade Law, edited by Daniel Bethlehem Donald McRae, Rodney Neufeld and Isabelle Van Damme; and the Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law, edited by Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunneé, and Ellen Hey.

Of particular significance this year were the online launches of the Oxford Reports on International Law and the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. They have been well received by specialists in the field for providing high quality content and analysis with valuable reference resources in the built-in Oxford Law Citator. In January, a Law module was added to Oxford Scholarship Online to provide ready electronic access to recent law monograph publishing.

In professional law, more than 80 new titles were published, including the second edition of Clayton & Tomlinson, the leading UK authority on Human Rights. In the light of recent legislative consolidation in company law, several major new reference works were published, including The Law of Consumer Credit and Hire, by Neville, Philpott, Hibbert, Smith, Sayer, Say and Popplewell. 2008 also saw the 14th edition of Cheshire, North and Fawcett; Private International Law, the first edition since the welcome return to the Press in 2005 of this important title.

The US law programme had a very strong year with a significant increase in the number of domestic monographs and treatises published. Mary Ellen O'Connell's new work, The Power and Purpose of International Law, received a good deal of positive coverage. A number of new titles provide highly practical deskbooks for attorneys. David R. Sugden's title on Gray Markets provides a practical blueprint for responding to the risks of products being sold through unauthorized channels. Richard Cawley's work on Winning The Patent Damages Case provides invaluable advice across the full litigation process, while David Quinto and Stuart Singer produced an equally practical work on Trade Secrets.

Oxford journals, a Division of OUP, publishes 235 journals covering a broad range of subject areas, two-thirds of which are published in collaboration with learned societies and other international organizations.

OUP's journals publishing programme continues to flourish. Increasingly Oxford Journals is considered to be the publisher of choice in a competitive market place, where OUP's strong brand, emphasis on quality, and fair pricing policies are well received. The overall quality of the list is demonstrated by Journals' impact factor rankings. According to the latest Journal Citation Reports, one fifth of the Oxford Journals science and medicine titles are in the top 10 per cent and over two thirds in the top 50 per cent of their subject category. In 2009, OUP won 15 contracts to publish society-owned journals, compared with eight in 2008, seven in 2007, and ten in 2006. This trend, combined with the launch of more new journals, has led to the steady growth of the list from 187 journals in 2004 to 235 in 2009.

Of the 15 journals that Oxford Journals acquired in 2009, six are health-related: the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology; the European Journal of Heart Failure (published on behalf of the European Society for Cardiology); Nicotine and Tobacco Research (published by the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco); and three journals owned by the Gerontological Society of America (The Gerontologist, The Journal of Gerontology, series A and The Journal of Gerontology, series B).

Three life sciences journals have joined the list: Acto Biochimica et Biophysica Sinica, Systematic Biology (Society of Systematic Biologists); and Tree Physiology, which deals with responses of forest, crop and ornamental tree species to acid rain, air pollutants, ultraviolet radiation and global warming. The division has also acquired The International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies which is concerned with the challenge of climate change and its effects on the environment and sustainability. New humanities and social sciences titles include: Journal of Church and State; the Sociology of Religion, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment; the Leo Boeck Yearbook; and Analysis.

Oxford Journals has recently launched three new journals: the Journal of Human Rights Review; the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, an English language journal published in China, launched in collaboration with The Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Society for Cell Biology; and Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation, which is published under a fully open access model, with journal costs being covered by author publication charges.

Oxford Journals'experiment with open access, the Oxford Open initiative, now includes more than 90 journals. For those journals using optional open access as a model, where authors chose to pay for their papers to be made freely available online, 887 papers were open access in 2008, representing an average of 6.6 per cent of their total published articles.

Oxford University Press is a world leading publisher of reference works. it is the home of the redoubtable Oxford English Dictionary, and a vast range of mono- and bilingual dictionaries across forty languages. It also produces general reference works, including Oxford Companions, illustrated histories, anthologies, atlases, and encyclopaedias.

Last year, OUP's Reference departments focused much of their efforts on the online publishing programme. More than ten major reference copyrights were added to the Digital Reference Shelf (DRS) initiative, including the newly published Oxford Encyclopedia of Legal History and the canonical Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. The growth of the DRS programme highlights just one way in which OUP is meeting the challenge of moving its academic business online. In addition to the continued success of recently established sites such as Oxford Language Dictionaries Online, Oxford Biblical Studies Online was launched in March 2009. Drawing from the rich material of both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the site integrates Oxford's award-winning study Bibles and its renowned reference content in an innovative research environment to guide historical study of the Bible as text. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography project continues to update online content three times a year, and in March 2009 the first printed supplement to the 60-volume 2004 edition was published, gathering together 819 biographies of people - from Roy Jenkins to George Harrison - who died between 2001 and 2004 and whose entries have already appeared online.

Through strategic licensing partnerships, OUP is experiencing an ever-increasing presence in emerging digital markets. The iPhone App of the Concise Oxford Dictionary remained in the top 20 bestselling paid Apps for months after it was launched in November 2008. In addition Apple Computers now offers the New Oxford American Dictionary as a core part of its new Mac operating system and Amazon has included an Oxford dictionary as the only preloaded book on the Kindle e-reader.

The editorial project to rewrite the Oxford English Dictionary has progressed steadily. Batches of revised and new material published online each quarter have alternated between work to extend the continuous alphabetical sequence of the new edition (now extending from M to mid-way through R) and clusters of high-profile terms chosen across the alphabet because of the extent of change in their usage over the last century - this year's include bad, big, cool, hot, art, community, human, life, food, sport, social, street, voice, walk, word, acid, aceto-, alkali, carbon, cell, chemistry, English, and British (America/n having been revised in March 2008).

OUP's International Division has witnessed some focused areas of expansion in the reference area. OUP Southern Africa and OUP India have been successful in publishing a range of bilingual dictionaries at the schools and adult levels. A noteworthy addition to the Indian range was the English-English-Hindi Dictionary, and in Southern African the English-Afrikaans School Dictionary won a prestigious award for its contribution to the development of the Afrikaans language.

Also in India, the reference list continues to grow with such books as Theatres: A Concise Companion and the second edition of The Oxford Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music.

Higher Education is an important publishing area for OUP, with strong lists in the UK, USA, and in many international markets.

OUP UK's HE publishing programme has continued to grow in breadth, with a cluster of new business textbooks, the launch of a new higher education nursing list, and the publication of the first titles in the Concentrate law revision series.

New titles on the Business list included: Mankin's Human Resource Development; Matthewman et al's Work Psychology; Hamilton & Webster's The International Business Environment; Godson's Relationship Marketing; and Gilmore & Williams' Humon Resource Management. In Economics, a new edition of Burda and Wyplosz's Macroeconomics was published. Law publishing continues to thrive with several significant new publications, including: Tort Law by Horsey & Rackley; Business Law by Marson, and Evidence: Text & Materials by Durston.

A number of new texts and new editions were published on the Politics, International Relations, and Media lists. First editions include: Garner et al's Introduction to Politics; Haerpfer et al's Democratization; Morrison's Public Affairs for Journalists, and Goodhart's Human Rights: Politics and Practice. In Science some new first editions were: Keeler & Wothers' Chemical Structure and Relativity; Hosey et al's Zoo Animals; Meneely's Advanced Genetic Analysis; and a brand new Psychiatry textbook edited by Stringer et al. The nursing HE textbooks list was launched with Docherty & McCallum's Foundation Clinical Nursing Skills, and Clarke & Walsh's Fundamentals of Mental Health Nursing.

The range of online resources provided by OUP is expanding to include author podcasts and blogs to support lecturers and students on the Online Resource Centres (book-specific accompanying websites). Some recent innovative features include an author blog for Tricker's Corporate Governance, a wiki activity to support Alexander & Docherty's International Retailing, and video clips to support the new nursing textbooks.

In the USA, some excellent new and updated publishing has improved the fortunes of the department. In science, McKee and McKee Biochemistry and the new revision of Levinton's Marine Biology performed above expectations. The publication of OUP USA's first adaptations, including Newnan et al's Engineering Economic Analysis, helped stem re-importation of US product back from low-priced markets into the US. In Communications, the revision of some top-selling copyrights, including Adler et al's Understanding Human Communication, Fedler et al's Reporting for the Media, and Sturken/Cartwright Practices of Looking, made this a big year.

OUP's International Division continued its growth in locally published HE titles. India continued its rapid expansion of local HE publishing in the fields of business and engineering. Srivastava and Misra's Financial Management and Subramanian's Design of Steel Structures were two new additions to the list. Pakistan published the second edition of Khan's Constitutional and Political History of Pakistan.

In Australia Anthony's Connecting with Law and Harrison's Teaching and Learning in Indigenous Education stood out. The latter helps educators include Aboriginal perspectives across the curriculum to ensure that Aboriginal Australia becomes a constant reference point for students rather than a topic that is touched on here and there.

Oxford Fajar in Malaysia continued to develop the local business list, including a new core university text, Aminuddin's Human Resources Management. OUP Mexico published 11 new titles to add to their well-established Higher Education Law list.

A second edition of Sociology: A Canadian Perspective by Tepperman, Albanese and Curtis, OUP Canada's best-selling introductory sociology text, was published. The first titles of South Africa's new HE law list, including the very successful Companies and Other Business Structures by Davis, Cassim et al, were launched. South Africa also strengthened its profile in the accounting market with titles such as Principles of Management Accounting by Roos, Cairney, and Chivaka et al.

OUP's educational publishing includes a UK-based Division (Oxed), and bespoke curriculum-based publishing across all International Division branches and OUP España. It ranges from early school years through to resources for final school exams, includes literacy programmes, resources for all other major subjects, dictionaries and other reference works, and a small range of children's fiction.

Last year Oxed's Primary level publishing reached a new highpoint, with fresh publishing initiatives in established literacy programmes, the Oxford Reading Tree and the successful synthetic phonics scheme Read Write Inc. The Primary highlight of the year was the launch of Project X in January 2009. Borne out of research into why so many boys struggle with learning to read, this digitally illustrated guided reading scheme incorporates elements designed to motivate today's children, especially boys.

Oxford Reading Tree's new digital Magic Page product won a Big Chip Award for Best e-learning project published in 2008, and the creators of the Oxford Reading Tree, author Rod Hunt and illustrator Alex Brychta, won the Outstanding Achievement category at the March 2009 Educational Resources Awards, sponsored by the British Educational Suppliers Association.

At Secondary level Oxed published a range of new resources to meet the new requirements at Key Stage 3 and A/AS level, across Maths, Science, Modern Foreign Languages and Geography, and English. Of particular note were the new geography resources for KS3, consisting of a third edition of the successful geog. programme, and the Modern Foreign Languages publishing for A/AS level, both of which strengthened OUP's standing in these areas. Secondary publishing was supported across the range of subjects and levels by an e-textbook platform, OxBox, which offers teachers enrichment resources keyed to the pages of the student's book, planning tools, and assessment software. OxBox has been very warmly received in the market and has been a critical component in closing course adoptions.

In children's fiction, Oxed published a new range of Winnie the Witch books designed for children just starting to read for themselves. Peter Pan in Scarlet, the official sequel to Peter Pan, was re-published in an edition sensitively abridged by the author Geraldine McCaughrean, and gloriously illustrated by David Wyatt. Proceeds from every copy sold go to benefit Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. The Call of the Wild and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were added to the Oxford Children's Classics series, taking to 14 the number of titles published in this small hardback format. Oxed's Children's and School Dictionaries remain an important list and last year saw the publication of new editions of the Primary Maths and Science Dictionaries.

Oxed's International publishing list had a very successful year. In partnership with the International Baccalaureate Organisation, the Division published a further suite of resources for this innovative and well regarded qualification. New titles were added in Maths, Psychology and Geography. Oxed also provided resources for the textbook programme instigated by the Ministry of Education in Ghana.

In Spain, OUP España's local publishing catalogue for upper-secondary (15-17 years) was completely renewed in 2008 to meet the new curriculum requirements for those levels. The new list included textbooks for Spanish Language and Literature, Philosophy, Biology and Geology, Physics and Chemistry, Mathematics and Science for the Contemporary World. This new publishing strengthened OUPE's overall presence in the upper-secondary market in Spain.

OUP's International Division saw new schools publishing across every branch. Highlights include: Australia's Oxford Literacy, a series of engaging readers based on the Oxford Wordlist research and designed specifically to support guided reading in the first three years of school, and Big Ideas in Humanities, which enables students to build deeper learning by developing transferable understandings.

India's New Enjoying Mathematics, a revised edition of a highly successful series, is aimed at shifting learners away from rote learning to thinking, deducing, and reasoning abstract mathematical concepts. New Broadway is a revision of a bestselling multi-skill ELT course.

Pakistan's Maths Wise for six Primary levels, and The Essential Reader; Stories from Pakistan, an anthology compiled for secondary and 0 Level students covering contemporary creative writing in English and translations from Urdu and Sindhi.

From South Africa, two anthologies of short stories and poetry, Storyscapes and Poemscapes, for the Grade 12 literature courses.

China's revised ELT Exam Skills and Success, a strategic publishing programme incorporating the latest Certificate English Exam format changes.

From Canada, continued publishing into its established subject areas. The ninth edition of The Canadian Oxford School Atlas marked the golden anniversary of the best-seller's first publication. The Canadian Challenge brings twentieth-century history to life for today's secondary school students, continuing the Branch's tradition of publishing in social studies.

From OUP Mexico, the continuation of Spanish-medium publishing for the local secondary schools market.

From East Africa, Kenya's Oxford Primary English for Rwanda for a Rwandan government tender. The Branch also published the second edition of Certificate Business Studies based on the revised Kenyan syllabus. Tanzania published new Secondary school science titles (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) for the Zanzibar tenders funded by USAID, as well as eight new Grade 5 titles for the latest phase of the new curriculum implementation in Tanzania.

OUP's ELT Division continues to sustain a leading position in British English, and build its profile in American English. The Division operates across more than 100 countries, and maintains a diverse publishing portfolio.

Headway continues to be the premier course for adult learners around the world. A highlight of 2008 was the publication of a new edition of New Headway Intermediate, the first of the Headway levels to go into a fourth edition, an unprecedented event for any ELT course.

The New English File series enjoyed another year of significant growth, with the new Upper-intermediate level almost doubling sales of the previous edition. A Beginner level was also published, taking the series to five levels.

More publishing was completed for the recently launched new Adult series, English Result and English for Life, and OUP's first five-level Business English course, Business Result, was also completed, accompanied by a video-based teacher training course in Business English.

In response to the increasing demand for concrete learning outcomes and a growing interest in testing services, ELT launched its first fully online product Oxford English Testing, providing interactive English language practice tests for sale to students around the world. There are links to the website through print titles and plans to extend the service to institutions during the coming year.

In Grammar the Oxford Learner's Pocket Grammar was launched, achieving sales of 22,000 copies to date. The Oxford Word Skills series, which takes a practical approach to building vocabulary, was also completed.

The third edition of Bookworms has had a very successful launch, with sales of the new edition well ahead of forecast.

In Spain, more regions are encouraging the teaching of English to children aged three, four and five, and ELT published a new "two-tier" course for this level, Oxford Playschool. Alongside existing publishing for this sector, this should ensure that OUP remains the number one choice for pre-primary English in Spain. In Primary, the 6-level series for 6-11 year olds, Surprise, was completed. Oxford Science Content was launched as a response to the growing demand for primary content materials in English. New courses were also published in lower secondary, including materials for students taking remedial classes in the final years of compulsory education. It has been an important year for Upper Secondary with two new courses for 16-18 year olds preparing for the university entrance exams: Get it right and Distinction.

The development of My Oxford English (MOE), the OUP España distance learninq project, was completed at the beginning of the year. My Oxford English is an English language learning system targeting Spanish adult students, the core of which is a media rich interactive 10-level course which takes students from beginner level to B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The course is available in both online and DVD-ROM format and is accompanied by a whole range of services including tutorial systems and an Oxford University accredited examination which students can access on completion of the course.

In Italy, Smart English has established itself as a clear market leader at lower secondary level. New Horizons and Think English, both launched in recent years for the upper secondary market, continued to perform well. The most important two developments in Italy are that from 2009 teachers will have to keep adoptions for a minimum of six years, and that from 2011 ELT courses must be made available in digital format for students to download from the internet, or supplied as "blended books".

In Poland, the anticipated change in the adoption system did not happen, but other changes, including the introduction of a new 15+ examination, offered the usual challenges. ELT's revision guide for this examination, Gimnazjum Expert, has performed well in its first year and was the first title to have an Oxford English Testing.com link to a market-specific examination. Solutions, in Polish and international versions, achieved exceptional sales in its first year of publication. This was ELT's first five-level upper secondary course and has been well received by teachers: to quote one, "This is the book I've been waiting for all my working life".

In Brazil, Engage went from strength to strength, becoming the best-selling title in most regions.

International Primary courses continue to offer strong opportunities for growth. The year saw the launch of a new course for Pre-Primary, First Friends, and the first three levels of the Primary course to follow on from it, Family and Friends.

ELT's digital offering continued to expand with the publication of more than 45 websites, 100 interactive CD-ROMs, 24 video programmes and 140 audio CDs. Highlights included the Oxford iTools product line across Schoolbooks titles, offering digital resources for use on interactive whiteboards. Other initiatives included digital workbooks to accompany Business Result student books, Print Test Generator software to help teachers create and customize print tests for ELT titles quickly and easily, and the launch of a Bachillerato website, featuring student and teacher content in an exclusive, access-controlled website for the Spanish market.

In the USA, the year saw the launch of a remarkable new edition of the best-selling and well-loved Oxford Picture Dictionary Programme. Monolingual and bilingual editions - Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Farsi, French, Haitian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Urdu, and Vietnamese - meet the learning needs of immigrant communities across the country. The second edition was developed with extensive input from teachers and includes an online media package. An American version of one of ELT Division's best-selling courses was also published, for learners of American English in Latin America, Middle East, and Asia - American English File - which is already exceeding expectations.

The Dictionaries team launched a new edition of the Oxford Collocations Dictionary, which helps learners of English understand which words go together. Over the year, the team also published an English-Korean version of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, and new editions of two bilingual dictionaries, Diccionario Oxford Escolar for Mexican students of English, and the Oxford Schulwörterbuch for German students.

In October 2008, Professor Henry Widdowson retired after more than 25 years as exclusive adviser to OUP's Applied Linguistics list. A party was held in his honour at the Bodleian Library to mark his significant contribution to the ELT Division.

OUP published new titles across all core publishing areas in music last year. These included new choral works by John Rutter and Bob Chilcott, a collection of 14 contemporary carols, The Ivy and the Holly, and a range of new anthems, carols and other pieces. A new edition of William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast was also published. This choral masterpiece, written in 1931, was initially banned from the Three Choirs Festival on account of its perceived blasphemy, but introduced to the Worcester Festival by Sir David Willcocks in 1957, as he recounts in A Life in Music; Conversations with Sir David Wilicocks and Friends, a fascinating account of his distinguished musical career, also published this year.

New titles were added to all educational music publishing's series. Two music industry awards were also earned: best Pop Publication for Popular Voiceworks, and Best Education Publication for Spring Time Joggers.

2008 was the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. This was marked by increased performances of his music throughout the world, including a sequence of BBC Proms concerts, culminating in an Anniversary Day concert on the day itself devoted entirely to his works. New editions of three of his most popular works were published: The Lark Ascending, Serenade to Music, and the Fifth Symphony. Michael Berkeley celebrated his sixtieth birthday in 2008. The occasion was marked with a performance of his orchestral work Slow Down at the BBC Proms and the premiere of a major new opera with a libretto by Ian McEwan, For You. There were significant new recordings, performances, and commissions for all OUP's house composers throughout the year.

OUP Delegates

Dr John Hood (The Vice-Chancellor)
Professor Donald Fraser (The Senior Proctor)
Dr David Harris (The Junior Proctor)
Dr John Nightingale (The Assessor)
Professor Roger Ainsworth
Sir John Ball (to 30 September 2008)
Professor John Barton
Professor Roger Crisp
Dame Kay Davies
Professor Tony Hope
Professor Desmond King
Professor Frances Kirwan (from 1 October 2008)
Professor Hermione Lee
Professor Martin Maiden
Professor Ewan McKendrick
Professor Anna Christina Nobre
Sir Peter North (to 30 September 2008)
Professor Chris Pelling
Dr Bryan Ward Perkins
Professor Mari Sako
Professor Paul Slack
Sir John Vickers
Professor Ian Walmsley

OUP Finance Committee

Dr John Hood (The Vice Chancellor)
Professor Donald Fraser (The Senior Proctor)
Sir Peter North (Chair to 30 September 2008)
Professor Desmond King
Professor Roger Ainsworth
Professor Paul Slack
Sir John Vickers (Chair from 1 October 2008)
Professor Ewan McKendrick
Dr Henry Reece (Secretary)
Mr David Gillard (Group Finance Director)
Ms Susan Froud (Managing Director of International Division to 30 June 2008)
Mr Peter Marshall (Managing Director of ELT Division)
Mr Tim Barton (President of OUP USA)

External Members:
Miss Ros Hedley Miller
Mr David Levin
Ms Charlotte Hogg
Sir James Crosby

Group Strategy Committee

Dr Henry Reece
Mr Tim Barton
Ms Susan Froud (to 30 June 2008)
Mr David Gillard
Ms Kate Harris
Mr Jesus Lezcano Garcia
Mr Peter Marshall
Mr Martin Richardson
Mr Neil Tomkins (from 1 July 2008)

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. 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.

There are three constituent reserves within the Fund. 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 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 2009 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
Reading, UK
26 May 2009