York University has launched Discover York Academics, a new electronic curriculum vitae (CV) tool designed to showcase the University’s outstanding faculty members.
Discover York Academics is a searchable database that enables faculty members to promote and store their research, publications, scholarly and creative works, and related teaching and professional activities in one centralized profile. In the process, their work and academic leadership will become more accessible and searchable for research collaborations and partnership opportunities, community engagements and more.
“Discover York Academics is an exciting, career-enhancing opportunity for York’s researchers, scholars and creatives to more widely share their public expertise and their local and global efforts to drive positive change,” said Amir Asif, vice-president research and innovation. “By using this tool, our faculty members gain a bigger platform to network, strengthen their visibility and grow their work’s reach, influence and impact.”
The new tool offers a streamlined process for faculty to update and maintain one online profile, aggregating information from multiple databases to create a single-source repository that fully encompasses and captures York’s rising research and innovation enterprise.
“I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to set up my profile and how comprehensive the automatic data collection feature was in finding my scholarly outputs,” said Jennifer Steeves, associate vice-president research and professor in the Faculty of Health. “As my profile is publicly available, my research is now more visible to potential collaborators, partners and graduate students. Discover York Academics is an exciting opportunity to showcase the academic achievements of York’s faculty, truly reflective of a leading research-intensive university.”
Discover York Academics offers a more streamlined appearance, user experience and functionality for faculty profiles across the institution, and acts as an enhanced resource for both internal and external audiences.
Staff and students stand to benefit from the tool as well, by using it to seek out information on faculty availability for graduate supervision, insights into their academic or industry collaborations or to identify experts in a specific research or subject area.
Key features of the tool include:
- reduced data entry through automation and aggregation from public sites such as DSpace, Scopus, ORCiD and Dimensions, and York databases like PeopleSoft and SIS;
- customized report and CV generation to assist researchers with grant applications; and
- full user control of profile, including private and public information display settings.
A test phase of the tool at York was run from September to December 2023, with more than 125 faculty members participating as test users.
The tool is in use at other research institutions, including the University of Toronto, the National University of Singapore and the University College Dublin, among others worldwide.
If faculty need assistance setting up a profile, they can register for workshops running from February to April by navigating to YU Learn and searching for "discover," book a one-on-one training session online or in-person, or email their CV to dyahelp@yorku.ca for direct help. Training resources, guides and technical support are also available here.
To create your profile and learn more about Discover York Academics, click here.