April 26, 2022

Longleaf Services: Building Consortial Journal Publishing Models that Empower Libraries as an NGLP Pilot Partner

Established in 2006 as a division of The University of North Carolina Press, Longleaf Services has built a strong reputation as a mission-aligned collaborator for the university press community, offering a suite of services for small publishers that take advantage of the Press’ expertise and economies of scale. As an NGLP pilot partner, Longleaf Services will explore how to bring scalable and efficient publishing services to library publishers–including libraries looking to build new programs from scratch.

Longleaf’s Executive Director Clay Farr explained: “For years, we have been hearing from our library and university press partners that they want mission-driven alternatives to solve their publishing challenges. NGLP has allowed us to tap into professional tools that are built for scale, while keeping control of the publishing decisions with the libraries, presses, and other campus partners.”

The Longleaf pilot, launching this spring, will demonstrate the ability to build coalitions and scale across library publishers by coordinating through a non-profit, mission-aligned partner. The pilot will focus on journals with the aspiration that Longleaf’s services will eventually expand to books. It will utilize the Janeway Systems platform for manuscript submission and review, NGLP’s Web Delivery Platform (WDP) for discovery and display, and NGLP’s Analytics Dashboard (AD) for impact and workflow metrics.

Longleaf has identified an initial set of interested library-based publishing initiatives across the seventeen-campus University of North Carolina system who are either seeking a more robust solution for self-hosted publications or who are interested in outsourcing some or all of the editorial services currently associated with their campus-based journals publishing. The pilot will also explore the opportunity to aggregate the display of these individual publications under a consortial, institution-based identity. Once established, this will serve as a demonstration case for university administrations well beyond the UNC system, that library publishing can scale and that there are trusted open source platforms and reliable service providers in this space. 

UNC Press director John Sherer believes that NGLP represents a unique opportunity for collaboration across the UNC System. He explained: “The statewide UNC System could be the perfect potential use-case for NGLP. Given the diversity of its constituent parts—from huge flagship universities to small liberal arts campuses, and everything in between—we require adaptable and modular resources to allow UNC Press to support their wide-ranging needs. We expect our product offering to benefit each campus in unique ways, while collectively showcasing the research output of the statewide System.”

 

This is the second in a series of posts on NGLP’s pilot implementations launching this spring. For more information about NGLP and our pilots, visit our website.