Most GC students and faculty are familiar with CUNY Academic Works, CUNY’s public access repository, but possibly only as the destination for graduating students’ dissertations, theses, and capstone projects. Indeed, since 2014 all GC dissertations, theses, and capstone projects have been posted to Academic Works. In addition, many alumni from earlier years have opted to share their dissertations with the public. (The earliest dissertation that has been “set free” is from 1966 — among the first GC dissertations ever! Are you an alum? Learn how to make your dissertation public.)

But the Academic Works cornucopia doesn’t end there. As of writing, it holds 23,043 items, 5,900 of which are from the GC. Not sure what else you might find in — or add to — Academic Works? Here’s a sampling of possibilities:

• Articles: Did you know that the vast majority of journals allow authors to post their articles online? Some journals allow authors to post the final, formatted version of the article, but most limit authors to either the pre-print (i.e., the manuscript as it was originally submitted to the journal) or the post-print (i.e., the peer-reviewed and accepted manuscript). Among the thousands of articles in Academic Works are Teaching French with the Fairy Tale: Folk Tales Written by Students of French (final, formatted version), Mass Shooting Films: Myths, Academic Knowledge, and Popular Criminology (post-print), and “My Brain Database Doesn’t See Skin Color”: Color-Blind Racism in the Technology Industry and in Theorizing the Web (pre-print).
• Book chapters: Here too authors need to make sure they understand their agreement with the publisher. Many agreements explicitly allow authors to publicly post some version of their chapter, and many publishers respond favorably to post-publication inquiries from authors. Book chapters in Academic Works include Burnout Syndrome and Depression, Representations of New York City in Latin Music, Combating Global White Supremacy in the Digital Era, and Sharing Digital Collections and Content (co-authored by the library’s own ILL Supervisor Silvia Cho).
• Books: There aren’t too many full books in Academic Works (this is no surprise; most book publishers don’t allow it), but there are a few, including 1968/1989: Political Upheaval and Artistic Change and Being a Scholar in the Digital Era: Transforming Scholarly Practice for the Public Good (co-authored by Chief Librarian Polly Thistlethwaite).
• Datasets: Researchers increasingly share their research data for the sake of transparency and reproducibility. One example in Academic Works is the dataset for the article “Should Students Assessed as Needing Remedial Mathematics Take College-Level Quantitative Courses Instead? A Randomized Controlled Trial.” (The article is also in Academic Works.)
• Conference presentations, including the slides for Mapping the Futures of Higher Education: Community, Equity and Innovation, the speaker’s text for Tracing Trans Bodies in Neobaroque Literature, and the poster for Project Safe Flight: Making New York Safe for Migratory Birds (co-created by E-Resources Librarian Adriana Palmer).
• Open Educational Resources (OER): CUNY faculty have shared hundreds of OER (i.e., cost-free and openly licensed educational materials) they’ve created on Academic Works. Examples include the textbook An Invitation to Linear Algebra, a module about cryptography for an introductory computer science course, the presentation Multilingual/Translanguaging: Narrative Writing Through Authentic Language, and a course syllabus for Afro-Brazilian Music and Culture. It’s easy to browse all OER in Academic Works via this link.
• Reviews, including a book review of Translingual Practices and Neoliberal Policies: Attitudes and Strategies of African Skilled Migrants in Anglophone Workplaces, a book review of Jam on the Vine, and a film review of the Conformist.
• …and more: Works that fall into the great expanse of Academic Works’ “Other” category include Dancecult Bibliography: Books, Articles, Theses, Lectures, and Films About Electronic Dance Music Cultures, an encyclopedia entry on Translanguaging, the full proceedings of the 5th CUNY Games Conference (as well as the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st), and a WARC (web archive) file of a Twitter chat about open access between yours truly and @OpenAccessHulk, captured for posterity just before the site Storify was shuttered.

Screenshot of the Academic Works live download map

You might be thinking, “OK, OK, I get it — there’s a lot of stuff in Academic Works. But how often is it actually discovered and downloaded?” The answer is: a lot, mostly via Google and Google Scholar. In the past year, there have been more than 1.4 million downloads by people all over the world. And, according to the live download map, 44 downloads since I started writing this paragraph.

Have you ever spent a few minutes watching the live download map? It’s mesmerizing to watch the pins steadily drop and thrilling to know that each one represents the impact of CUNY researchers and the relevance and necessity of their work.

Want to increase (and observe, through your author dashboard) the impact of your scholarly, creative, or pedagogical works? Add them to CUNY Academic Works. If you need any help or have any questions, consult our guide or email AcademicWorks@gc.cuny.edu.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.