GC Students: Submit Your Work to Academic Works!

Graduate Center students, we’re finally ready for you! You may now self-submit your scholarly and/or creative works to Academic Works, CUNY’s open access institutional repository! And by “works,” we mean just about any kind of scholarly or creative output: journal articles, book contributions, conference papers, slideshows, posters, datasets, reports, interviews, creative writing, musical compositions, images, etc.

Academic Works logo

Are you really allowed to make your journal articles open access? Yes, the vast majority of journals allow authors to make their articles (either the submitted version, the accepted (post-refereed) manuscript, or the publisher’s PDF) freely available online. Find out which journals allow what at SHERPA/RoMEO, which provides easy-to-read summaries of journals’ policies.

What’s in it for you? Why should you submit your works to Academic Works? Lots of reasons! Here are just a few:

  • Posting your work online helps you find the widest possible readership, and helps you share your work with potential employers, collaborators, etc.
  • Articles that are freely available online are cited more by other articles. (Learn more about the open access citation advantage.)
  • Materials in Academic Works are more discoverable by Google and Google Scholar.
  • Academic Works will send you monthly download statistics so you can better understand the impact of your work.
  • Unlike disciplinary repositories that only accept research articles (e.g., arXiv.org), Academic Works accepts any kind of scholarly or creative work.
  • If your publisher requires an embargo period before your work can be made open access, Academic Works can count down the embargo for you and automatically open the work up when the embargo expires.

Ready to go? Go straight to the Submit Research page, click Graduate Student Publications and Research, create an account (using your GC email address), and start submitting!  Or, if you’d like more information and step-by-step instructions, consult our Academic Works LibGuide first.

A few important notes:

  • Academic Works is only for completed works, not works in progress.
  • Only submit works that you have the right to share and make open access.
  • Do not submit your dissertation or thesis directly to Academic Works. See the library’s deposit procedures for information about that.

Questions? Contact AcademicWorks@gc.cuny.edu

Getting your work online is a great summer project — happy uploading!

laptop on dock

Photo is © Giorgio Montersino, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license

About the Author

Jill Cirasella is the Scholarly Communication Librarian and University Liaison at the CUNY Graduate Center.