Oxford University Press has been named Britain's top publisher in the annual league table published by trade magazine The Bookseller.

Its turnover of £392.4m is four per cent down on last year, but still bigger than the number two publisher Macmillan, at £350m.

OUP's £61.8m pre-tax profit, known as a surplus, is reinvested or given to Oxford University. In April it gave £60m from its booming financial reserves to help the university develop the Radcliffe Infirmary in Woodstock Road, which it bought from the NHS.

Its surplus would have been higher had it not been for a fall in the value of sterling.

OUP announced last week that 1,000 institutions had signed up for trials of its Oxford Scholarship Online, an Internet site which gives access to more than 700 OUP reference books.

Both it and Macmillan have 1600 employees, having taken on 66 and 45 more staff respectively. OUP has more staff in Oxford, since its headquarters are in Walton Street. Macmillan is based in Basingstoke but employs several hundred people at Between Towns Road, Cowley.

Taylor & Francis, which has its journals division at Milton Park, near Abingdon, is ranked eighth, but it is expanding rapidly, with turnover up 18 per cent.

Blackwell Publishing, based at Oxford Business Park, Cowley, is tenth, with £105.5m sales and 526 employees.

Military and history publisher Osprey, of Botley, is in 46th place with £5.6m turnover, and Christian publisher Lion, of Littlemore, is 50th with £5.1m turnover.