CUNY Academic Works: Before you post

The submission process consists of the following steps:

1. Check the copyright of the work you intend posting permanently on CUNY Academic Works.
2. Login to CUNY Academic Works or create an account if this your first time submitting content
3. Read and accept the Submission Agreement
4. Describe the work, including an abstract and keywords, and identify yourself and your co-authors.
5. Upload your file(s).

An administrator will check the submission before making it visible on CUNY Academic Works.

Before you submit:

• Identify one or more of your scholarly or creative works to submit to CUNY Academic Works. Only submit completed works (whether in manuscript or final formatted form), not works in progress.
• For each work, make sure you have the copyright to make it publicly available online.
  • Journal articles: Consult your publishing agreement and/or SHERPA/RoMEO, a site that identifies publishers' default copyright policies. Many publishers only permit the post-refereed author's manuscript (= post-print) to be shared on an institutional repository.  For future publications, consider submitting an author's addendum in order to retain copyright to your work. Try the Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine.
  • Book contributions: Consult your publishing agreement or inquire with your publisher. Get some helpful hints from the free online guide, Understanding Rights Reversion, released by the Authors Alliance.
  • Other content types: Many content types, such as conference presentations, can be added to the repository without seeking additional permissions. Please contact CUNY Academic Works if you have any questions about your ability to make your work publicly accessible.
• Posting is permanent!  Once content is posted to CUNY Academic Works it will not be removed except in cases where legal or moral rights are violated.  This is a key characteristic of an institutional repository. 
• For each work, we recommend you have the following: (1) title, (2) brief, informative abstract, (3) descriptive keywords (max. 10), and (4) an electronic copy of the file.

CUNY Academic Works can accept files of any type (PDFs, powerpoints, image files, etc.) and of any size.  However, smaller file sizes are more user friendly.   Of course, it’s best for each file to be in the appropriate format for its content:

• If the work is an article, chapter, or other textual work, submit it as a PDF, Rich Text Format (.rtf), or Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) file. CUNY Academic Works will convert .rtf, .doc, and .docx files to PDF and also create CUNY-branded cover pages for these works.
• If the work is a slideshow, data set, or other kind of non-textual work, submit the file in whatever format makes the most sense for the work (e.g., PowerPoint, Excel, CSV).

CUNY Academic Works does not stream audio or video content, but can embed streaming content from sites like YouTube and Vimeo so users can preview the content before downloading the file.