Longleaf has also been involved with several major grants from organizations like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Arcadia Fund to support innovation in university press publishing. Grants have supported the expansion of general publishing services, the creation of new work-flow tools for the development and distribution of open access monographs, and the exploration of open-sourced tools to support a wide range of university-based publishing activities. Participation in these grants keeps us on the cutting edge of innovation in scholarly publishing.

The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot

In June of 2018, Longleaf (through UNC Press) received a three-year $998,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a digital-first open access monograph pilot for university presses publishing in the field of history. We have signed up 23 presses (including some Longleaf distribution clients) for participation and the first monographs are in the pipeline and due to be published later this Fall. There are several blog posts on the Longleaf website with more detailed updates about the program.

Next Generation Library Publishing Partnership

In August of 2019, Longleaf was chosen as one of five partner institutions to execute a $2,200,000 grant awarded to the Educopia Institute, buy Arcadia—a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin—in support of the “Next Generation Library Publishing” project. Longleaf will work with the other partners (California Digital Library (CDL), Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), LYRASIS, and Strategies for Open Science (Stratos)) to provide new publishing pathways for authors, editors, and readers by advancing and integrating open source publishing infrastructure to provide robust support for library publishing.

Collaborative Services Platform for University Presses

In December 2014, the University of North Carolina Press received a three-year $998,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a suite of scaled publishing solutions addressing many of the current challenges facing university presses. These offerings, developed upon our wholly owned distribution affiliate Longleaf Publishing Services, are providing savings, tools, and efficiencies to presses in ways which could not be achieved individually. With a particular emphasis on publishing high quality digital monographs there were three categories of services being developed: Editorial/Design/Production Services; Marketing Services; and Publishing Operations.