Libraries interact directly with publishers and the broader scholarly publishing community and have much to convey in terms of discovery and dissemination strategies for research. York University Libraries provide support and infrastructure for scholarly production and dissemination. At the production end, we offer open access publishing support, research data management assistance, and a free online journal hosting service called York Digital Journals. The Libraries also enter into agreements with publishers to provide York researchers with article processing charge discounts to publish in Hybrid and Gold open access journals. YorkSpace, York University's institutional repository supports an alternate route to open access, which involves placing a copy of your published work (subject to publisher policy) in an open access repository.
Making one’s publications accessible is a function of a number of factors, including addressing barriers to access (open access publishing), considering copyright, leveraging technological infrastructure to maximize visibility, and publishing in venues that are recognized and visible to one’s target readership. The links below address these areas, integrating how the infrastructure described above advances strategies for navigating the landscape.
- York University Senate Policy on Open Access: Frequently Asked Questions
- Understanding green and gold open access publishing (includes how to meet Tri-Council open access requirements)
- Copyright information for authors (includes copyright, author addenda, takedown notices)
- Ways to maximize the indexing, visibility and exposure of your research using YorkSpace
- Research data management
- Research impact (includes research metrics, altmetrics, benchmarking, visualization tools)
Need help with making your research open access? Contact us at opendeposit@yorku.ca.
Author Profiles and Identifiers (ORCID, Scopus ID, Web of Science ResearcherID)
Author profiles, also known as researcher profiles, are an essential component of your academic career to build and enhance your online presence and increase engagement. An author profile is an accessible online profile of your professional and academic activities, outputs, and achievements. It allows information about your academic and professional career, and your research to be correctly attributed to you, visible, easy to find, and accessible.
There are several types of author profiles that can be created and managed. Of note, some profiles are automatically created once you have an article that is indexed, notably the Scopus database. An author profile contains a unique author or researcher identifier that is assigned to you and follows you over the course of your academic and professional career. Much like a Social Security Number (SIN), unique author identifiers like ORCID, Scopus ID, and Web of Science ResearcherID allow researchers to distinguish themselves, even if names, employment, and affiliations change. It is important to check and correct your author profiles, because your publications may be fragmented with multiple IDs that have been created by different profiling platforms. Enhance your visibility by creating and monitoring author profiles over time. Learn how to correct your author details, add your institutional affiliation, merge author profiles, and ensure your publications are correctly attributed to you:
- Create and update your ORCID profile
- Check and update your Scopus author profile
- Create and update your Web of Science author profile
Contact metrics@yorku.ca for more information.
York University Libraries enter into agreements with publishers to provide article processing charge (APC) discounts. Some of the Libraries’ agreements cover up to 100% of the APC charge for publishing in certain Hybrid and Gold open access journals. To learn more about the APC discounts available to York faculty and students, please review the various discounts on the Libraries’ Investments in Open Access webpage.
- Open Access Publishing: Frequently Asked Questions
- Choosing an appropriate journal for publishing research (includes open access options and information on predatory publishers)
- York University Libraries - Investments in Open Access Publishing
- Research funded by the York University Libraries Open Access Author Fund during 2013 to 2023
- Please note, the Open Access Author Fund transitioned in 2024 to allow the Libraries to focus on securing article processing charge discount agreements with specific publishers.
YorkSpace Institutional Repository
YorkSpace is York University’s Institutional Repository. It functions as an open access library of digital objects. Each submission must be accompanied by a digital object that can be made available to the York and global scholarly community permanently without access restrictions. YorkSpace hosts a variety of scholarly outputs including faculty papers, award winning student papers, Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), and conference proceedings.
York University Libraries provide an electronic journal hosting service for York-affiliated journals. This service is called York Digital Journals (YDJ). Over 50 scholarly journals and other publications are currently hosted by the platform. Some of the YDJ hosted faculty-led journals feature the peer-reviewed work of graduate and undergraduate students.
Research Data Management (RDM)
The Tri-Agency expressed its expectations on sound research data management and data stewardship practices in its Research Data Management Policy (2021). York University’s Open Access Open Data Steering Committee led the development of our institutional Research Data Management (RDM) Strategy. Published in 2023, York’s institutional RDM strategy compiles both internal and external RDM supports available for York researchers.
While grant applicants are being asked to submit data management plans (DMP) at the application stage and deposit research data at the end of their research projects, it is prudent that researchers consider and apply data management principles throughout the research lifecycle. Not doing so may have impacts in the areas of ethics, data security, and sharing of research results.
DMPs can be created by using the DMP Assistant. This tool provides access to templates and resources that help researchers think through how to manage their data at all stages of the research lifecycle.
York researchers can deposit their final research data to York University Dataverse, a member of Borealis: The Canadian Dataverse Repository. The Research Data Management Team at York University Libraries provides support to York-affiliated researchers interested in using York University Dataverse. These supports include setting up sub-Dataverse collections and providing curation reviews of submitted datasets to ensure York researchers’ open datasets meet the requirements of funding agencies and scholarly journals.
- FAQ for the York University Institutional RDM Strategy
- Research Data Management Support at York University Libraries
- Creating a research data management plan (managing your data before, during, and after publication)
- Depositing your data (making research data accessible)
Need research data management support? Contact us at yul_rdm@yorku.ca.
The measurement and assessment of research outputs can be used to better understand the research landscape and various forms of impact, including academic, societal, and economic impact. Using resources available through York University Libraries and beyond, you can gain a sense of the impact of your scholarship, perform impact analysis, find collaborators, and track research trends. When used responsibly and in context, research metrics can be used as evidence of impact for grant, job, promotion and award applications. Have questions about research impact? Want to learn more about the tools available to track the reach and impact of your work? Consult our Research Metrics website for more information or contact us at metrics@yorku.ca.