Before you begin, be sure to prepare the following items:

  1. The title of your Open Educational Resource
    e.g., Fluid Mechanics Lab, Course Outline or American Government, Fall 2021 Syllabus
  2. Date of publication
  3. A brief, informative abstract
  4. A list of keywords (10 maximum) describing the work
  5. An electronic copy of your submission as a Word document

Submission steps:

  1. Select the submission link for New York City College of Technology Open Education Resources.
    1. Sign into your Academic Works account OR create an account if you do not already have one.
  2. Read and accept the Submission Agreement.
  3. Provide information about yourself and any co-authors, and fill out all required metadata fields (see below for more details).
  4. Upload your electronic file and associated files, if any.

Metadata fields to fill out:

  1. Title
    1. Format your title with the course title, and type of resource it is.
      E.g., Health and Safety Syllabus
  2. Authors
    1. Your name, e-mail address, and affiliation will automatically appear in the author field if you are signed into Academic Works. Select the green plus-sign to add any additional co-authors.
  3. Affiliations at CUNY
    1. Select all CUNY institutions and departments with which you and your co-authors are affiliated.
  4. Document Type
    1. Select the document type that best fits your submission. If your work does not fall into one of the listed categories, select “Other.”
    2. Select Syllabus for Course Outline.
  5. Publication Date
    1. Enter your work’s publication date. The year is required, but all other fields are optional. E.g., Fall 2022
  6. Embargo Period
    1. Since your work is an open educational resource created at City Tech, no embargo period is required.
  7. Keywords
    1. Please separate keywords/keyword phrases with commas.
    2. Adding keywords to your submission will allow for greater discoverability of your work.
  8. Disciplines
    1. Please indicate the academic discipline(s) that best describes your submission. Select a discipline to locate more options for your specific field of study. 
  9. Language
    1. Select the language that your work is written in.
  10. Abstract
    1. Provide an abstract or description of your work, a 1-2 sentence narrative about your course. While not required, an abstract improves the discoverability of your work in Google and Google Scholar.
      • e.g., “This course studies the fundamentals of fluid mechanics including: properties of fluids, fluid statics, manometers, center of pressure, buoyancy, stability, principles of fluid flow, flow measurements, frictional head losses, conservation of momentum and energy, pump power and efficient, and open channel flow.”
  11. Comments
    1. If you received OER funds in coordination with City Tech Library, add the following credit to fulfill OER programming requirements:
      • “Funding for this OER project was provided by the CUNY OER initiative, coordinated by the Office of Library Services, which incentivizes assigning open and zero-cost course materials for students. Support for the initiative was provided by New York City College of Technology Library Department.”
    2. Add a descriptive sentence including the course code of your class in this section.
      E.g., “This syllabus is part of the course materials for COMD 2320: Introduction to Video at the New York City College of Technology.”
    3. Optional: Add a link to your OpenLab website in this section.
      e.g., “OER at NYCCT are housed on the City Tech OpenLab, a dynamic platform that allows faculty to easily update their course and related materials. As faculty teach with their OER, they may revise them. We recommend consulting the full OER at: CMCE 2351 Fluid Mechanics Lab.”
    4. Any additional text relevant to your project to be displayed on the index page can be entered here as well.
  12. Creative Commons License
    1. Select the appropriate open license for your work. Refer to Creative Commons license descriptions.

You are done! Thank you for sharing.

Contact the City Tech OER team if you have any questions about how to prepare your OER submission for Academic Works.

To contribute your scholarship to Academic Works, please consult this guide by Prof. Monica Berger.

Why does sharing your work matter?

Adding your OER or open textbook to Academic Works greatly benefits you in a variety of ways. Academic Works serves several functions. It preserves and documents the output of CUNY whether related to scholarship or to teaching in the open. Another key function of Academic Works is that it makes content much easier to find. Material added to Academic Works is indexed by Google and Google Scholar. Major OER repositories and hubs harvest OER content in Academic Works including OERCommons, TeachOER, and Teaching Commons. This helps OER creators outside of City Tech find and adapt your work.

Academic Works further benefits you by allowing you to document the impact of your work. Download metrics for your material in Academic Works can be added as evidence on your PARSE. Academic Works also has a widget that allows readers to comment on how a specific item helped them. Knowing who has adapted or taught with your open textbook or OER demonstrates the excellence of your work!

Prof. monica berger, instruction and scholarly communications librarian


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