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The following section provides policy and procedural guidance on submitting your scholarly works to YorkSpace, including who and what can be submitted, accepted file types and metadata format, YorkSpace's structure, and withdrawals and modifications to the repository.
Policies
YorkSpace primarily preserves and provides access to scholarly works of the York University community. We may accept submissions authored by all members of the York University community, and from outside scholars who have projects that are closely tied to York University.
This includes:
- Faculty, Emeritus, and Post Docs
- All members under this party may submit works that adhere to the submission criteria using the Deposit Form. If you wish to submit 5 or more documents to YorkSpace, please contact us at diginit@yorku.ca.
- Visiting Scholars
- Visiting or outside scholars affiliated with a lab, project, or event within York University should only submit work that is produced within the context of their York-affiliated lab or project. Please submit these documents, along with your York Affiliation, via the Deposit Form.
- Staff
- All members in this category may submit scholarly works related to research or academic activities. In general, YorkSpace does not accept items relating to university business, meeting notes, administrative materials, or other materials subject to the university’s Common Records Schedule (CRS).
- Graduate Students
- Apart from theses or dissertations submitted to YorkSpace by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, graduate students may deposit scholarly works under one of the following two conditions:
- published scholarly works may be deposited without faculty sponsorship if they were subject to editorial review (this includes conference presentations);
- any other works of scholarly merit may be deposited with faculty sponsorship. Please ask your faculty sponsor to email diginit@yorku.ca with a sponsorship statement along with a copy of the item you wish to deposit.
- Apart from theses or dissertations submitted to YorkSpace by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, graduate students may deposit scholarly works under one of the following two conditions:
- Undergraduate Students
- Undergraduate students may deposit exemplary works of scholarship with the sponsorship of a faculty member. Please ask your faculty sponsor to email diginit@yorku.ca with a sponsorship statement along with a copy of the item you wish to deposit.
YorkSpace may accept deposits by delegates on behalf of these users. Delegates may include academic units or publishers.
- Works submitted to YorkSpace are, in general, either completed works of scholarship or Open Educational Resources.
- Some examples include: Author Accepted Manuscripts for Research Articles, Research Articles, Book Chapters, Presentation/Lecture Slides, and Podcast Episodes.
- Works are accessible according to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) standards. Submitters are responsible for ensuring that their works are accessible. Please see the following resources to learn more about accessible formatting:
- All items submitted to YorkSpace adhere to copyright law and observe copyright restrictions. This means that authors must own the copyright to their own works or adhere to their publisher's self-archiving policy.
- All scholarly works submitted to YorkSpace have been produced while being a York University community member or a project affiliated with a lab or organized research unit at York University. YorkSpace does not accept works created while under the employment of another institution.
There are two workflows for adding material to YorkSpace:
- Mediated Deposit, which is used for [the irregular/occasional] deposit[s] of fewer than 5 items;
- Self-deposit, which is used for regular or large-scale deposits by individual scholars or academic units.
Mediated Deposit
Mediated Deposit allows authors to request deposit assistance from York University Libraries for up to five articles per submission. Eligible York University community members must use the YorkSpace Mediated Deposit Service if they have one to five articles that they would like to submit to YorkSpace. Please use the YorkSpace Deposit Form for your submission.
Please note that the Libraries can deposit more than five documents on behalf of an author; however, we will require a consultation prior to depositing these works to YorkSpace [should we indicate why a consultation is necessary? eg in case special handling is required]. Contact diginit@yorku.ca to request a consultation.
Self-deposit
York University community members or units may request self-submitter access to YorkSpace, if they have more than 5 files to deposit. These files may be submitted by the author or their delegate with relevant permissions. Please contact diginit@yorku.ca for self-submitter access.
York University community members are defined as individuals who are affiliated with York University, as outlined above in the Submission Criteria section of this webpage.
In order to receive self-submitter access to YorkSpace, potential self-submitters will be required to:
- Attend and complete a YorkSpace submitter training session [1) Link requires login. 2) are we shifting to totally online or will there be a personal component where I walk self-submitters through the submission form?]
- Read the YorkSpace Procedures webpage [If self-submitters need to read this page, say something like "Read and be familiar with the contents of this page"]
- Have their first five deposits checked by YorkSpace staff
The Libraries have the right to revoke self-submitter access if materials deposited are either restricted by copyright or if the self-submitter has not received relevant permissions from publishers and/or copyright holders to make works openly accessible. Self-submitters will be required to retake YorkSpace training prior to regaining submission access.
Please email diginit@yorku.ca when you no longer require self-submitter access.
Communities, Subcommunities, and Collections
YorkSpace is structured in three separate hierarchical layers:
- Communities
- Sub-Communities (optional)
- Collections
All items are held in Collections
Discoverability
Please note that the hierarchical structure will not affect the discoverability of digital objects. Most items are discovered via search engines, such as Google Scholar, and the York University Library Catalogue. The hierarchical layers of YorkSpace act as an organizational tool for the site, rather than as a tool for discoverability.
Below are the terms under which York University Libraries will create Communities, Sub-Communities, and Collections for York University community members.
Communities are the primary storage levels that house sub-communities and collections.
- Communities are created at the Faculty level, Academic Units (i.e. Teaching Commons, York University Libraries), and for Organized Research Units.
Sub-Communities are secondary storage levels that are housed under Communities.
- Sub-Communities are created at the faculty departmental level and may also be created for conferences and/or events that are organized and hosted on a yearly basis at York University.
Collections are nested within Communities or Sub-Communities, and house digital objects.
Although YorkSpace is designed to be a site of long-term access and preservation, York University Libraries understands that errors may occur during the YorkSpace deposit process. Please see the procedures below if you require modification or the withdrawal of your deposited YorkSpace item.
- Modification: To modify a YorkSpace record means to make minor changes to the item information and file type.
- Withdrawal: To withdraw an item from YorkSpace means to remove the item from public view. The item will not be accessible or downloadable as a result.
Modifications
- Item Information: Please contact diginit@yorku.ca to request changes to the descriptive information associated with your YorkSpace record.
- File Modifications: Minor revisions to an item’s file to correct spelling mistakes or minor errors are allowed. However, if there are major revisions to your file, including the addition of any new content, an updated version of the file must be submitted. This updated version will be uploaded alongside the original file. The author of the item and/or the submitter must contact diginit@yorku.ca to request file modifications.
Please note that these file modification requirements do not apply to Theses and Dissertations. See the Modifications and Withdrawals of Theses and Dissertations section of this webpage for more information.
Withdrawals
YorkSpace is a permanent site of preservation for scholarly works created by York University community members. Therefore, items are not normally removed from YorkSpace. York University Libraries (YUL) recognizes that there may be a few instances in which withdrawal and/or complete removal of materials may be necessary. These requests will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
York University Libraries reserves the right to withdraw items without author notification for the following reasons:
- suspected violation of the terms of the YorkSpace Non-Exclusive Distribution Licence
- copyright infringement and/or plagiarism
- published items that have been retracted or deemed fraudulent by the original publisher
- verified takedown notice for a specific item has been submitted to York University Libraries
- item is a national, provincial, local, or individual security risk
- item results in an invasion of privacy or reveals personal information without consent from appropriate parties
- item does not align with the mandate of the institutional repository (e.g., temporary questions/files for course examination, meeting agendas, etc.)
An attempt to contact authors will be made after the item is removed, if the author’s contact information is available to the Libraries.
Modifications and Withdrawals of Theses and Dissertations
Theses and dissertations are official university records managed by the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS). FGS must be contacted directly to request changes to your YorkSpace record. Once approval from FGS is communicated to the Libraries, an edit or withdrawal can be made in YorkSpace.
Please visit eThesis and Dissertations webpage for FGS contact information.
Guidelines
Required Fields
Metadata refers to the descriptive information associated with an article, such as authors, the article title, and date.
All submissions to YorkSpace should adhere to the following descriptive standards and must include the following information:
- Author(s) - Last name, given names
- Title
- For accessibility best practices, please ensure that the title of your submission is not in all capital letters.
- Incorrect: HOW TO BUILD A STRUCTURE
- Correct: How to build a structure; How to Build a Structure
- Year of Creation/Publication
Additional Descriptive Information
Additional information may be required if you are self-archiving an author accepted manuscript to YorkSpace. Please review the self-archiving section of your copyright agreement with your publisher to determine if any additional information is required.
If your submission is not in English and you would like to include an English title as Other Title and other descriptive metadata in English (e.g., abstract, keywords), please include the translated metadata alongside your submission.
Keywords
Keywords are optional, but highly recommended to improve discoverability of your scholarship. If you wish to include keywords, please adhere to the following rules.
- Ensure that the first letter of each keyword or phrase is capitalized. Do not use all capitals or all lower case letters.
- Incorrect: STRUCTURAL RACISM, structural racism, Structural Racism
- Correct: Structural racism
- Include a maximum of ten keywords or short phrases, entered in separate lines
Other Recommended Descriptors
The following is a list of additional descriptive information that can be included in a YorkSpace record and may improve the discoverability of your work:
- an abstract or a description of the item
- sponsorship information, such as funding providers and grants
- identifiers such as Digital Object Identifier (DOI), International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) or International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
YorkSpace allows users to submit a variety of file types under 4 GB. YorkSpace, as with all other digital preservation tools provided by York University Libraries, follows guidance outlined in our Digital Preservation Policy. As per the policy, we recommend all YorkSpace users submit the recommended file types as listed below:
| Document Type | Recommended File Type | Links for More Information |
| Textual Documents and Theses | Preservation Action Plan - Theses | |
| Audio | WAV or FLAC | Preservation Action Plan - Audio |
| Images | Uncompressed TIF file | Preservation Action Plan - Images |
| Video | AVI or MOV | Preservation Action Plan - Video |
Please note that we still accept MP3 and MP4 files for online streaming purpose; however, we can only preserve these materials [omit: with files] at a Bit-Stream Preservation Level. For more information on Digital Preservation best practices, see York University Libraries' Digital Preservation Policy.
Journal Article Submissions
Unsure about which article version to deposit to YorkSpace? See our YorkSpace Self-Archiving Support webpage for more information.
Accessibility Tips for Files
- Please visit the resources on Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM) site, including those on Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and Multimedia, as well as the University of British Columbia's OER Accessibility Toolkit, to learn more about formatting items in an accessible manner.
- Include captions or a transcript for audio or video files. Please visit this page on adding subtitles & captions to video files.
Procedures
Option 1: Self Deposit [reverse the order since most deposits are mediated?]
If you have a substantial number of items that need to be deposited to YorkSpace, you must use the self deposit option. If you need to use the self deposit option, please contact diginit@yorku.ca for training.
Option 2: Mediated Deposit
We offer a service called mediated deposit, which allows authors to request deposit assistance from York University Libraries for up to five articles per submission. YorkSpace staff members will submit these items on an author's behalf. Please allow YorkSpace staff up to one month to deposit articles on your behalf. If you would like to take advantage of this service, please fill out the YorkSpace Mediated Deposit Form. Please contact diginit@yorku.ca should you have any questions or concerns regarding this service.
For more information about the types of works that can be submitted to YorkSpace, please review the Submission Criteria and Submission Requirements of the Policies section above for more details.
This webpage, originally created by Priscilla Carmini and Stephanie Quail, has updated and maintained by Jack Leong. It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
Last updated: September 19, 2025