Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world – bigger than all the US university presses and Cambridge University Press put together – with around 5,000 employees worldwide and offices in 50 countries. OUP is also one of the most diverse publishers in the world, producing on average 6,000 new publications per year across a very broad educational spectrum, from primary school literacy schemes to giant works of scholarly reference.
OUP operates thirteen major publishing centres – in the UK, USA, Spain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico, India, Pakistan, China and Malaysia. They produce a range of locally-focused educational materials for schools, higher education, and academia across forty languages. They also promote and sell publications from other parts of the Press. With two-thirds of OUP’s employees based outside of UK, and 85 per cent of its revenues deriving from non-UK markets, OUP has tremendous global reach.
As an integral part of the University of Oxford, OUP has become a powerful ambassador for the rest of the University around the world. It draws on other departments’ academic expertise and is perhaps one of the most visible exponents of the University’s primary objective: excellence in research, scholarship, and education.
OUP’s reputation has been built upon producing high-quality educational publishing. Arguably its most famous publication is the Oxford English Dictionary which is, in reality, an ongoing research project designed to capture the ever-evolving landscape of the English language. OUP is also the leading British-English ELT publisher in the world and it is estimated that in the UK around 40% of children learn to read using OUP materials such as the Oxford Reading Tree.
OUP’s publishing is increasingly embracing digital and online platforms. There are currently 22 major academic and reference online products, several key online and digital products for the primary and secondary market, 235 scholarly journals online and an online centre for interactive English tests for the ELT market.
Such publishing success has generated impressive revenues – sales for the 2008-09 financial year in the region of £580m. Increasing efficiencies have also resulted in larger surpluses from trading, and this has enabled the Press to make substantial transfers to the rest of the University over the last decade, in the region of £471m.
The funds support many important University initiatives. The Clarendon Scholarships, launched in 2001, have so far provided financial support for more than 500 overseas postgraduate students to study at Oxford. The John Fell OUP Research Fund, named after the ‘Father of the Press’, provides seedcorn and start-up grants to stimulate research opportunities in all subject areas.
Special transfer money has purchased the Radcliffe Infirmary site, now under development as the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, and recently funded the restoration of the Sheldonian Theatre’s ceiling panels. OUP is also supporting the development and refurbishment of the New Bodleian Library.
The activities of the Press are steered by its Delegates – a governing body of University members. There are 17 regular Delegates, appointed by Council for a five-year term (renewable for a second term), plus four ex-officio ones: the Vice-Chancellor, the Senior and Junior Proctors and the Assessor.
A longer version of this article was first published in the April 2009 issue of Blueprint, the University's staff magazine.
