The press still remains affiliated with the 17-campus UNC System that strives to advance scholarship and serve its regional and state communities.

By 1950, nearly 100 such volumes had appeared under its imprint, including historian John Hope Franklin’s first book, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790–1860, published in 1943.

In the 1970s, UNC Press championed published books in Native American and Indigenous studies, a field of national and global interest that has grown significantly in recent years.

UNC Press's Office of Scholarly Publishing Services (OSPS) provides access to a range of sustainable, mission-driven publishing models and solutions for UNC system libraries, research centers, institutes, and departments to lower the cost of producing and disseminating educational and scholarly publications.

Notable UNC Press authors include historians such as John Hope Franklin, Gerda Lerner, Gordon Wood, Mary Kelley, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Nell Irvin Painter, Glenda Gilmore, Timothy Tyson, Gary W. Gallagher, William A. Darity Jr., Tiya Miles, Laurent Dubois, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Cedric J. Robinson, Robin D. G. Kelley, Kelly Lytle Hernández, and Louis A. Pérez Jr.; scholars of American and world religions including Carl W. Ernst, Catherine Brekus, and Anthea Butler; literary writers and critics such as Elizabeth Lawrence, Cleanth Brooks, Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Wolfe, Paul Green, and Wilma Dykeman; prominent scholars of the American South including Howard Odum to William Ferris; and North Carolina celebrities including David Stick, Bill Neal, Mildred (Mama Dip) Council, and Bland Simpson.