CUNY Academic Works: Prepare to Submit

The submission process consists of the following steps:

• Login to CUNY Academic Works or create an account if this your first time submitting content
• Read and accept the Submission Agreement
• Provide information about yourself and any co-authors, as well as the work
• Upload your electronic file and associated files, if any

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. Once content is submit to CUNY Academic Works it should not be removed except in cases where legal or moral rights are violated.
• For each work, be sure you have the right to make it publicly available online.
  • Journal articles: Consult your publishing agreement and/or JISC Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO), a site that identifies publishers' default copyright policies. 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.
  • You can find more information about your rights in the Copyright section of this guide.
• 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. 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).
• If the work is a video, compress the file for best results. You should also try to upload at internet low traffic times to avoid slow uploading. You can compress and export using your video editor or using the free compression app MPEG Streamclip.

As a guide, Graduate School of Journalism recommends the following compression for capstones:

Format: MPEG-4 (.mp4)

Quality: 100%

Data Rate: 5,000 Kbps

Audio: MPEG-4 AAC, 256 kbps

Select: Deinterlace Video

Framesize: unscaled