Discover York Academics (eCV Tool)

As a user, your Discover York Academics profile is under your control. All functionality of the system has been set to private, the user will need to activate the public view if they would like to make their profile visible to others. 

The Elements platform allows you to select what parts of your profile you want publicly visible. You can add many details or choose to hide items down to the level of a publication or grant record within your profile.  You may want to retain detailed information in Elements to use in your academic CV file, and simply hide it from the public view – it is completely up to you.

One of the advantages of using Discover York Academics is its ability to harvest publication data from a number of internal York databases and external library databases, including, SSRN, Scopus, ORCiID, Dimensions, and more.  

Using your name and researcher IDs, Discover York Academics – Elements suggests publications, grants and database identifiers that could potentially belong to you to assist with building your profile. You can then “claim” or “reject” these identifiers, along with the publications and grants that are associated with them. You can also claim/reject individual publications.

Yes, work on Osgoode Digital Commons will be integrated to your Elements profile. If it is a publication, it will be labeled as “Local Source 1” as its source.

 Yes, you can delegate access to your Discover York Academics – Elements Profile.  

In the Discover York Academics – Elements tool, a delegate is a person to whom you grant profile editing permissions. A delegate edits your profile by logging in with their credentials and “impersonating” you. Multiple delegates can be set up for a single profile.  

To add a delegate to access your profile and permit editing rights to that person, you follow these steps:  

• Send a message to the dyahelp@yorku.ca  email address, letting us know to whom you want to delegate editorial access to your profile. Please include in your email the full name and York ID (student ID or employee ID) number of your delegate. In the Subject line, please add “Request for delegate to my profile.”   

• Once you have received the confirmation email, click on the hamburger menu in the upper left corner of your Discover York Academics – Elements profile page to find the Settings menu item. At the bottom of the Settings menu list, you will find the “Manage Delegate “option. By clicking on it, the link will take you to the “Manage Delegate” page, where you can authorize the addition of your delegate to your profile.  

Faculty members have control over their profile visibility including grants, teaching activities and other professional activities. However, to make sure your research is seen we highly recommend you make your publications visible  

Two overall profile privacy levels are available – Internal and Public. By default, York Discover York Academics – Elements profiles are set to Private.    

Private – Discover York Academics – Elements profile will only be visible to the owner. The Discovery public profile will NOT be published.    

Internal – Discover York Academics – Elements profile will still be viewable to other York faculty members, but the Discovery public profile will NOT be published.   

Public – Discover York Academics – Elements profile will be viewable to other York faculty members, and the Discovery public profile will be published.

To adjust the privacy level of an item, click on the Private icon and select either Private or Public. Items that have been marked as Private will not be viewable to other York Discover York Academics – Elements users and will not appear in your Discovery public profile. 

You can search for other York faculty members in Elements, however only profiles set to the Internal privacy level will be accessible to view. Here are the steps:  

1. Click on the hamburger menu in the upper left corner of your Elements profile page to find the Reporting menu item.   

2. In the list of the Reporting menu, you will find “System Search”. By clicking on it, you will be able to make a simple or advanced search.   

3. Do not be surprised if the search results do not yield full profiles. It will only list items for you that contain the keywords you used for your search.  

4. However, by clicking on the reach results, you can go to other users’ internally shared profiles and information. 

Please see Professor Carys Craig’s profile for an example of the type of scholarly work and professional activity for Osgoode faculty profiles. 

If you are ready to make your profile public, please see this guide for instructions on how to change your privacy settings. 

Discover York Academics data is hosted on secure Canadian servers and follows industry standard encryption. Access to the tool backend is limited to select York staff and University IT.   

Discover York Academics is produced, collected, used, stored and destroyed according to the York University Institutional Data Governance Program and follows FIPPA regulations.  

Discover York Academics is a central depository and redistributor of:  

• Public data (from public sources like ORCID, Scopus and York public data like Faculty Profile information), contact information, published research and grant/funding information.   
• Information relating to education and employment history will only be shared by the user with the knowledge, careful consideration regarding sensitivity and safety, and consent of the user.  
• Information for internal use that is used in the day-to-day operations of the University, like teaching activity and supervision-related information, except for confidential and private information.   

Data shared by the user will only be shared with the knowledge, careful consideration regarding sensitivity and safety, and consent of the user.

The University is committed to protecting your privacy by making sure that personal information is appropriately managed and protected and that your right to access your information is respected. By default, all settings are set to private, and users will need to activate the public view option.   

The automated feeds only display public information like publication titles and tri-agency grants. As with all data in Elements, you can hide even these pieces of information from your public profile. Beyond that, the entirety of your public profile, including the content you may wish to include or exempt, is completely dependent on you. If you have questions, please email dyahelp@yorku.ca.

The Discover York Academics system is a tool meant to showcase your scholarly achievements.  It will not be used for the purpose of evaluation – full stop. 

The Statement of Practice was developed in consultation with the York University DYA Governance Advisory Committee. They are clear on this: “Data within Elements will not be accessed by the University for any academic review or evaluation purposes or processes.” 

In response to different Faculty reporting needs, various activity reporting templates, such as a variety of CV forms, will be available in the system shortly. These optional templates are intended only to provide further support to faculty members who are seeking a way to fulfill their respective reporting commitments with greater ease.

For assistance with the Discover York Academics tool or to submit any questions, please contact dyahelp@yorku.ca or  maggietadros@osgoode.yorku.ca.