The University of North Carolina Press has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York to explore the obstacles and opportunities facing university presses as they seek to incorporate various forms of digital publishing. The funding will be used to study expanded publication models that can successfully and sustainably connect the emerging forms of scholarship that rely on digital and computer-based methods with the book and journal formats long associated with university press publishing.
The twelve-month project, which begins July 1, 2013, will be led by principal investigator, John Sherer, the Spangler Family Director of the UNC Press.
"We are very grateful to the Mellon Foundation for their generous support of this project. University presses are facing deep-rooted challenges, but this is also a moment to take a leadership role in defining and creating new modes of publishing that support the dynamic scholarship being done at our universities," said Sherer.