Policies for Open Educational Resources

Who Can Submit

Current faculty, students, and staff of The City University of New York (CUNY) are invited to submit their scholarly and creative works to CUNY Academic Works. For additional information, please contact academicworks@cuny.edu.

What Kind of Work can be Submitted

CUNY Academic Works accepts both published and unpublished materials that represent a range of intellectual and creative output, including: artworks, books, book chapters, book reviews, conference proceedings, educational materials, datasets, peer-reviewed articles, performances, poetry, presentation slides, posters, and professional blog posts. Content deposited to CUNY Academic Works will be associated with the name and affiliation of its author(s), and will be freely discoverable through major search engines such as Google and Google Scholar.

Theses and Dissertations

As part of the requirements for a graduate degree, The Graduate Center of CUNY requires that an electronic copy of each student’s thesis or dissertation be preserved and shared publicly by the Graduate Center Library through CUNY Academic Works. Additional information is available on the Library’s Dissertation and Theses web page.

Formatting

CUNY Academic Works accepts all file types, but encourages users to convert documents to PDF format when appropriate.

Copyright

In order to submit work to CUNY Academic Works, you must hold the copyright to the work or have the approval of the copyright holder(s) to submit the work. Submitters who deposit works agree to the following terms, which are displayed before each upload:

  1. I hold the sole and complete copyright in this Work, or have been authorized by the copyright holder(s) to enter into this agreement. I hereby grant to CUNY and its agents the non-exclusive right to archive, preserve, and make publicly accessible this Work in whole or in part through its open access institutional repository, CUNY Academic Works or any successor initiatives, in any medium now or hereafter known, in perpetuity.
  2. I warrant that the Work does not infringe or violate any rights of others.
  3. I have full power and authority to make this Agreement.
  4. I understand that entering into this Agreement does not alter my copyright or other rights to the Work that I may hold.
  5. I understand that once my Work is approved by the repository administrator, it may not be edited or removed except by contacting the administrator.
Previously Published Work

Works that were previously published may be subject to restrictions as to which version of the work may be submitted to CUNY Academic Works, an embargo period, or a publisher’s statement which must be included. You should check with your publisher to determine the repository policy before submitting the work. If you request an embargo period, the metadata record for the work will reside in the repository but the work itself will not be publicly available until the embargo expires.

Reviewing and Editing

CUNY Academic Works is intended for final works, not works in progress. Once a work is submitted and approved by the repository administrator, it may not be edited, although later editions may be added as new items. Make sure your work is ready for distribution before submitting it.

Removal

CUNY Academic Works is a permanent institutional archive. Once a work is submitted and approved by the repository administrator, it may not be removed except by contacting the administrator. Circumstances that may merit the temporary or permanent removal of a work include claims regarding copyright, privacy and data protection. In the case that content is removed, the metadata for that content will remain in the repository with a note explaining the reason for removal.

Individuals who believe that their copyright has been infringed by the posting of a work in CUNY Academic Works should provide notice in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to CUNY’s designated DMCA copyright agent (currently dmca@mail.cuny.edu). At the request of the DMCA copyright agent upon the receipt of a proper DMCA notice, the CUNY Scholarly Communications Librarian will withdraw the work from public view and add a note to the public metadata record indicating the status of the work. The submitter of the work will be notified that the work is subject to a complaint and advised of the submitter’s right to give a counter-notice. If the submitter gives a counter-notice and the complainant does not respond as provided by the DMCA, the removed work may be reposted.