Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. The first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586.[2] It is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press, which was founded in 1534.[3][4][5]
"OUP" redirects here. For other uses, see OUP (disambiguation).Parent company
1586
United Kingdom
Oxford, England
Nigel Portwood (Secretary to the Delegates and CEO)[1]
- Clarendon Press
- Blackstone Press
6,000
It is a department of the University of Oxford. It is governed by a group of 15 academics, the Delegates of the Press, appointed by the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. The Delegates of the Press are led by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century.[6] The press is located on Walton Street, Oxford, opposite Somerville College, in the inner suburb of Jericho.
For the last 400 years, OUP has focused primarily on the publication of pedagogical texts and continues this tradition today by publishing academic journals, dictionaries, English language resources, bibliographies, books on Indology, music, classics, literature, history, as well as bibles and atlases.
OUP has offices worldwide, primarily in locations once part of the British Empire.
Scholarly journals[edit]
OUP as Oxford Journals has also been a major publisher of academic journals, both in the sciences and the humanities; as of 2024 it publishes more than 500 journals on behalf of learned societies around the world.[47] It has been noted as one of the first university presses to publish an open access journal (Nucleic Acids Research), and probably the first to introduce Hybrid open access journals, offering "optional open access" to authors to allow all readers online access to their paper without charge.[48] The "Oxford Open" model applies to the majority of their journals.[49] The OUP is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.[50]
The OUP is a signatory of the SDG Publishers Compact,[51][52] and has taken steps to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the publishing industry.[53][54][55][56] These include the publishing of a new series of Oxford Open Journals, including Oxford Open Climate Change, Oxford Open Energy, Oxford Open Immunology, Oxford Open Infrastructure and Health, and Oxford Open Digital Health.[57][58][59]
Clarendon Scholarships[edit]
Since 2001, Oxford University Press has financially supported the Clarendon bursary, a University of Oxford graduate scholarship scheme.[61]
Controversies[edit]
Tehran Book Fair controversy[edit]
In February 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa urging the execution of British author Salman Rushdie and of all involved in the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie went into hiding, and an international movement began to boycott book trading with Iran. There was, therefore, outrage when, in April 1989, OUP broke the worldwide embargo and chose to attend the Tehran Book Fair. OUP justified this by saying, "We deliberated about it quite deeply but felt it certainly wasn't in our interests, or Iran's as a whole, to stay away."[62] The New York Times,[63] and The Sunday Times[64] all condemned Oxford's decision.
Malcolm vs. Oxford University 1986–1992[edit]
In 1990, in the UK Court of Appeal, author Andrew Malcolm won a landmark legal judgment against Oxford University (Press) for its breach of a contract to publish his philosophical text Making Names. Reporting on the verdict in The Observer, Laurence Marks wrote, "It is the first time in living memory that Grub Street has won such a victory over its oppressors".[65] The Appeal Court judges were highly critical of Oxford's conduct of the affair and the litigation. Lord Justice Mustill declared, "The Press is one of the longest-established publishing houses in the United Kingdom, and no doubt in the world. They must have been aware from the outset that the absence of agreement on the matters in question [the book's print-run and format] was not, in the trade, regarded as preventing a formal agreement from coming into existence. Candour would, I believe, have required that this should have been made clear to the judge and ourselves, rather than a determined refusal to let the true position come to light... This is not quite all. I do not know whether an outsider studying the history of this transaction and of this litigation would feel that, in his self-financed struggle with the assembled Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford the appellant has had a fair crack of the whip. I certainly do not... Mr Charkin took the decision [to renege on the OUP editor's contract], not because he thought the book was no good - he had never seen it and the reports were favourable - but because he thought it would not sell. Let there be no mistake about it, the failure of this transaction was about money, not prestige. Nor does the course of the litigation give any reason to suppose that the Press had any interest but to resist the claim, no matter on what grounds, so long as they succeeded."[66] Lord Justice Leggatt added: "It is difficult to know what the Deputy Judge (Lightman) meant by a 'firm commitment' other than an intention to create legal relations. Nothing short of that would have had any value whatever for Mr Malcolm... To suggest that Mr Hardy intended to induce Mr Malcolm to revise the book by giving him a valueless assurance would be tantamount to an imputation of fraud... It follows that in my judgment when Mr Hardy used the expressions 'commitment' and 'a fair royalty' he did in fact mean what he said; and I venture to think that it would take a lawyer to arrive at any other conclusion. There was therefore an enforceable contract for the publication of Mr Malcolm's book... The Respondents' final statement may be thought unworthy of them."[66]
The case ended in July 1992 with a Tomlin order, a damages settlement under which the servants and agents of Oxford University are permanently barred from denigrating Malcolm or Making Names, rendering it the first book in literary history to be afforded such legal protection.[67][68][69] The case was reported to have cost Oxford over £500,000.[70]
Closure of poetry list[edit]
In November 1998, the OUP announced the closure, on commercial grounds, of its modern poetry list. Andrew Potter, OUP's director of music, trade paperbacks and Bibles, told The Times that the list "just about breaks even. The university expects us to operate on commercial grounds, especially in this day and age."[71] In the same article, the poet D. J. Enright, who had been with OUP since 1979, said, "There was no warning. It was presented as a fait accompli. Even the poetry editor didn't know....The money involved is peanuts. It's a good list, built up over many years."[71] In February 1999, Arts Minister Alan Howarth made a speech in Oxford in which he denounced the closure: "OUP is not merely a business. It is a department of the University of Oxford and has charitable status. It is part of a great university, which the Government supports financially and which exists to develop and transmit our intellectual culture....It is a perennial complaint by the English faculty that the barbarians are at the gate. Indeed they always are. But we don't expect the gatekeepers themselves, the custodians, to be barbarians."[72] Oxford's professor Valentine Cunningham wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement: "Increasingly, (OUP) has behaved largely like a commercial outfit, with pound signs in its eyes and a readiness to dumb down for the sake of popularity and sales....Sacking poets not because they lose money but because they do not make enough of it: it is an allegory of a university press missing the point, mistaking its prime purpose."[73] In March 1999 The Times Literary Supplement commissioned Andrew Malcolm to write an article under the strapline "Why the present constitution of the OUP cannot work".[74] A decade later, OUP's managing director, Ivon Asquith, reflected on the public relations damage caused by the episode: "If I had foreseen the self-inflicted wound we would suffer I would not have let the proposal get as far as the Finance Committee."[75]
Tax-exemption controversies[edit]
Since the 1940s, both OUP and the Cambridge University Press (CUP), had made applications to the Inland Revenue for exemption from corporate tax. The first application, by CUP in 1940, was rejected "on the ground that, since the Press was printing and publishing for the outside world and not simply for the internal use of the University, the Press's trade went beyond the purpose and objects of the University and (in terms of the Act) was not exercised in the course of the actual carrying out of a primary purpose of the University."[76] Similar applications by OUP in 1944 and 1950 were also rejected by the Inland Revenue, whose officers repeatedly pointed out that the university presses were in open competition with commercial, tax-liable publishers. In November 1975, CUP's chief executive Geoffrey Cass again applied to the Inland Revenue, and a year later, CUP's tax exemption was quietly conceded.[77][78] OUP's Chief Executive George Richardson followed suit in 1977. OUP's tax exemption was granted in 1978. The decisions were not made public. The issue was only brought to public attention due to press interest in OUP following the poetry list closure controversy.[73] In 1999, the campaigner Andrew Malcolm published his second book, The Remedy, where he alleged that OUP breached its 1978 tax-exemption conditions. This was reported in a front-page article in The Oxford Times, along with OUP's response.[79]
In March 2001, after a 28-year battle with the Indian tax authorities, OUP lost its tax exemption in India. The Supreme Court ruled that OUP was not tax exempt in the subcontinent "because it does not carry out any university activities there but acts simply as a commercial publisher".[80] To pay off back taxes, owed since the 1970s, OUP was obliged to sell its Mumbai headquarters building, Oxford House. The Bookseller reported that "The case has again raised questions about OUP's status in the UK".[81] In 2003, Joel Rickett of The Bookseller wrote an article in The Guardian describing the resentment of commercial rivals at OUP's tax exemption. Rickett accurately predicted that the funds which would have been paid in tax were "likely to be used to confirm OUP's dominance by buying up other publishers."[82] Between 1989 and 2018, OUP bought out over 70 rival book and journal publishers. In 2007, with the new 'public benefit' requirement of the revised Charities Act, the issue was re-examined [83] with particular reference to the OUP.[84] In 2008, CUP's and OUP's privilege was attacked by rival publishers.[85][86] In 2009 The Guardian invited Andrew Malcolm to write an article on the subject.[87]
East African bribery scandal[edit]
In July 2012, the UK's Serious Fraud Office found OUP's branches in Kenya and Tanzania guilty of bribery to obtain school bookselling contracts sponsored by the World Bank. Oxford was fined £1.9 million "in recognition of sums it received which were generated through unlawful conduct" and barred from applying for World Bank-financed projects for three years.[88][89]
Uighur controversy[edit]
In December 2023, concerns were raised that the OUP had published an academic paper based on genetic data taken from China's Uighur population. The Times science correspondent, Rhys Blakely reported, "The research has been published online by Oxford University Press (OUP) in a journal that receives financial support from China's Ministry of Justice. The highly unusual deal will raise fears that Oxford risks becoming entangled in human rights abuses against the Uighur community. It will also add to concerns over China's efforts to influence UK academia."[90] The OUP announced that it would carry out internal investigations into three separate studies based on DNA samples obtained by scientists associated with the Chinese police. Two of them used genetic data from the Xibe people, a smaller ethnic group in China. These were co-authored by Chinese researchers affiliated with the Criminal Investigation Police University of China and the Academy of Forensic Science, which belongs to the Ministry of Justice in China.[91]
