Charlesworth China Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Published on: 16-02-2010 | Author: Sarah Philp | Email author

To coincide with the start of the Chinese New Year, Charlesworth China has just celebrated ten years since its inception in Beijing with an event attended by many high profile dignitaries. With nearly 100 attendees from Chinese leading publishing houses, colleges and universities libraries and other key organisations, the celebration was a great success.

Tao Tao, Executive Director of Charlesworth China opened the ceremony with a speech recalling how she has seen the company progress over the last ten years. This was followed by three key speakers, all very well known in their field in China, Professor Zheng Jiancheng (pictured) of the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) and Charlesworth's long-term partner, Professor Xiao Long, Vice Curator of Peking University Library, and key member of the CALIS consortia, and Professor Xiao Hong, Vice Chief Editor of Science Press. Each gave praise for Charlesworth's contribution to leading academic sources and thanks for the dedication of the Charlesworth staff in China, USA and UK.

In his address, Executive Chairman Neil Charlesworth gave an account of the history of The Charlesworth Group and explained how and why Charlesworth China was established, of which he said,

Our competitors in the UK started to move their typesetting offshore to save cost, in particular to India. It became essential that we also moved manufacturing offshore if we wished to keep the business.

Our choice was China. China has efficient, quick-learning staff with a very strong work ethic, a fast-growing economy and a rapidly developing domestic market. Not least of all, it has good food and very friendly people. It was an easy and exciting choice for us!

We started by offering typesetting services to our customers in the UK and so became an exporting company immediately. In 1999 we won The Queen's Award for Export Achievement. Our focus now is increasingly on the provision of high-quality, technologically advanced typesetting, including the use of XML and our unique AutoProof product which allows pagination of journal or book pages in minutes.

Neil described the achievements of Charlesworth China, how the company has evolved over the last decade, and the new services developed to meet the special needs of the Chinese market,

Whilst based in China, we developed close links with the academic community. After three years we realised that we understood publishing processes well. We expanded our range of services to provide marketing services to our existing publisher clients and started selling electronic rights to major academic libraries, consortia and government departments. Some seven years later we have become probably the largest importers of electronic journals into China.

Opportunities in China are never-ending, more recently we have expanded our activities into selling reprints to the pharmaceutical industry and now represent some of the world's leading medical societies and publishers, we organise the printing, and even the translation. In addition, our new language polishing service enables authors from China to have papers which they intend to submit to English-language journals to be refined by experienced native English-speaking editor, coordinated in our UK office. We therefore now supply services from manuscript through to published content!

In conclusion, thanks were given to the great management team and staff who have made such a huge contribution to the company's progression, some of whom have been with Charlesworth China from the outset including Tao Tao, Adrian Stanley, Amanda Laverick, COO of Charlesworth China and Steve Laverick, Technical Director.

Adrian who with Tao, was instrumental in setting up Charlesworth China, is now CEO of Charlesworth USA, said of the occasion,

I feel very proud to be here celebrating a successful first decade and toasting the future of Charlesworth China.

Directors propose a toast to Charlesworth China. Pictured from left: Neil Charlesworth, Richard Charlesworth, Tao Tao, Adrian Stanley, Stephen Laverick, Amanda Laverick and Xiaoying Chu, Production Director translates.

Numerous Charlesworth clients sent their good wishes upon the celebration including Dr John Inglis, Executive Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, who said,

As Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory prepares to expand its operations in Asia, we are delighted to have a publishing relationship with Charlesworth. The company's sound knowledge of China and warm relationships with the country's key academic organizations have been essential to a growing awareness of our journals among Chinese scientists. Congratulations on your first successful decade!

Scientific Publications Manager of the European Respiratory Society, Elin Reeves stated,

The European Respiratory Society would like to congratulate the Charlesworth China operation on their 10-year anniversary. Although we have worked with Charlesworth for many years now, our relationship with the China team began in early 2006. Headed by Amanda Laverick, the team provides a fast, professional typesetting service for our Society's journals. We are also working with the publishing services team to increase our journals' visibility in this region. We look forward to working with Charlesworth over the years to come and the developments this will bring.