CUNY Academic Works Forms

Web forms for CUNY Academic Works, CUNY's open-access institutional repository. When someone submits a form, an email goes to the Office of Library Services and the appropriate campus IR coordinator.

The forms

Form	Who uses it	What it does
agreement.html	Faculty	Signs an author agreement before depositing a work
benefit.html	Readers	Shares how open access to a work made a difference
accessibility.html	Readers	Reports an accessibility barrier with a work

Each form has a matching thank-you page (thanks-agreement.html, etc.) and is served from the CUNY OLS web server at ols.cuny.edu/academicworks/.

How it works

Forms submit to Google Forms using the browser's fetch() API, then redirect to the corresponding thank-you page after 500ms. Client-side validation uses Bootstrap's was-validated pattern. Anti-spam protection uses a hidden honeypot field and a minimum 3-second time-on-page check; bots are silently redirected to the thank-you page without submitting data.

Each form is connected to a Google Sheet. When someone submits a form, a Google Apps Script reads the submission and emails it to academicworks@cuny.edu plus the campus IR coordinator for that submission:

• Agreement form — routes by the faculty member's selected CUNY campus
• Benefit and accessibility forms — routes by the campus prefix in the work's URL (for example, gc in academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1234)

The agreement form also sends a confirmation copy to the faculty member.

See ROUTING.md for the full list of campuses and coordinator email addresses. ROUTING.md is regenerated automatically whenever a Code.gs file is committed.

Embedding the agreement form

The agreement form can be embedded in a third-party CMS (such as the academicworks.cuny.edu site) using a single script tag:

<script src="https://cuny-libraries.github.io/caw-forms/agreement-embed.js"></script>

This script creates an iframe pointing to the GitHub Pages version of the form and auto-resizes it as the user interacts with it. The form detects the ?embed=1 URL parameter and shows a simplified header — just the page title, no logo or border — and hides the footer.

The form is served from GitHub Pages (cuny-libraries.github.io/caw-forms/) for embedding rather than from ols.cuny.edu, because some browsers block requests from public sites to servers on private IP ranges. GitHub Pages has a public IP and is not subject to this restriction.

No separate maintenance is needed: pushing to main updates both the ols.cuny.edu server (via git pull) and GitHub Pages (automatically).

Setup

1. Clone the repository

On your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/cuny-libraries/caw-forms.git

On the server (first time only):

cd /var/www/html/academicworks
git clone https://github.com/cuny-libraries/caw-forms.git .

2. Install clasp (one time, local machine only)

clasp is the command-line tool that deploys Apps Script files to Google. The server does not need it — clasp is only used from your local machine.

From the repo root:

npm install       # installs clasp
npx clasp login   # authenticate with your Google account

Making changes

HTML form changes

Edit the relevant file (agreement.html, benefit.html, accessibility.html, or a thank-you page) locally, then:

git add <filename>
git commit -m "Describe what changed"
git push

Then on the server:

cd /var/www/html/academicworks
git pull

Apps Script changes (email routing, notification text)

The script files in apps-script/ control email routing and the content of notification emails. Edit them locally — do not edit directly in the Google Apps Script editor, so that changes are tracked in version control.

After committing a Code.gs change, the post-commit hook attempts to deploy it automatically via clasp. If that fails, deploy manually:

cd apps-script/agreement   # or benefit / accessibility
npx clasp push

Common tasks

Update a coordinator's email address

1. Open the relevant Code.gs file in apps-script/agreement/, benefit/, or accessibility/
2. Find the campus in the campusEmails map and update the address
3. Commit and push; clasp will deploy the script automatically

Add a coordinator for a campus currently routed to default

1. Add an entry to campusEmails in the relevant Code.gs
2. For the agreement form only, also add the campus to campusNames
3. Commit and push

Edit the agreement or notification text

For the form page itself, edit agreement.html and commit/push/pull on the server.

For the emails sent to coordinators or faculty, edit the relevant Code.gs and commit/push (clasp deploys the script; no server pull needed).