Publishing is, as one would expect in one of the world’s major centres of learning, a key industry in Oxford and its surrounding county. There are over 235 other companies working in the field, encompassing academic publishers as well as fiction, games and mobile storytelling. Adding allied organisations with a connection to publishing takes the total to 650. (Creative UK Clusters Data (Sept 22)
The scale of Oxfordshire’s thriving publishing sector was highlighted recently by the announcement by Hachette, the UK’s second largest book publishing group, of a significant expansion at its Milton Park facilities. The French-owned publisher has been gradually expanding in Oxfordshire since the 1980s, and its facility now distributes over 16 million books, a quarter of the company’s annual output, in diverse genres including fiction, non-fiction, children’s books and academic publications.
Oxford is a beacon of publishing in the UK. The country is a world leader in a sector which provides around 200,000 jobs nationally and contributes £11.7bn GVA, exporting books worth an estimated £2.76 billion. Academic publishing alone is worth £2 billion to the country. (DCMS estimates, 2017 and 2018)
Publishing is a key sub-sector within creative industries, one of the eight growth-driving sectors in the UK Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy
Oxfordshire’s publishing sector can boast the globe’s largest university press. Oxford University Press, which has been going for over 500 years, is also the world’s second oldest university publisher and produces over 6,000 titles a year.
Other major publishers in the region include Taylor & Francis, a leading publisher of scholarly research based at Milton Park where it employs 900 people. Established in 1852, it continues to thrive, most recently expanding its medical publishing with its acquisition in 2023 of 27 new journals, six digital hubs, and its purchase in 2024 of seven fully Open Access journals in biomedical, life, environmental, physical, and computer sciences.
Elsevier, a global leader in information and analytics and education for healthcare professionals, has its corporate office at Arc Oxford. Another longstanding company, with a history that dates back over 140 years, it publishes more than 2,900 digitised journals, including The Lancet and iconic reference work Gray’s Anatomy. Its medical education platform Osmosis has more than four million registered learners worldwide.
Pearson, based at Jordan Hill in the north of the city, is another British publishing powerhouse. With a market capitalisation of £8.65 billion, it employs over 20,000 worldwide. It has maintained an Oxford base since the 1940s and is the UK's largest awarding organisation, providing qualifications and resources to schools and students.
Macmillan, home to some of the world’s leading authors and creators, has its Oxford base in Cowley. It was bought by German publisher Holtzbrinck in 1999. Academic publisher Palgrave Macmillan has an office in central Oxford.
US academic publisher Wiley has a base at Arc Oxford. In 2006 it acquired Oxford’s iconic Blackwell Publishing house for £572 million.
A notable independent Oxford publisher is David Fickling Books which specialises in children’s literature and has published one of the city’s best-known authors, Philip Pullman. It also publishes the weekly children’s magazine, The Phoenix.
This is an overview of Oxfordshire publishers – we will bring you more news from this centre for the global publishing industry as it happens.
Image provided by The Oxford Magazine