Page History

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DSpace 7.6.x

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Background 

This Technical RoadMap is based on the DSpace 2015-18 Strategic Plan - Technology and the Use Case Analysis produced by the DSpace RoadMap Working Group in April/May of 2015. The DSpace RoadMap Working Group consists of the members of DCAT, Committers and Steering Group: Tim Donohue (Lead, DuraSpace), Stuart Lewis (Edinburgh), Bram Luyten (@mire), Jonathan Markow (DuraSpace), Michele Mennielli (CINECA),  Richard Rodgers (MIT), Ryan Steans (Texas Digital Library), Maureen Walsh (Ohio State).

While it is a living document, it was initially presented at both OR15 (week of June 8), and OAI9 (week of June 15).

• A video screencast of this 2015 talk is available at: http://youtu.be/qlPAeqCptxw
• Slides are also available at: http://www.slideshare.net/tdonohue/dspace-technology-roadmap-201516

Since 2015, ongoing Strategic Planning activities have taken place in DSpace Steering & Leadership Group Meetings.

How to get involved

• If you'd like to help us achieve specific goals in this RoadMap, please get in touch via our Mailing Lists or Slack.
• DSpace is primarily supported by community code contributions.  If you'd like to contribute code, please see our Code Contribution Guidelines.
• If you are interested in discussing a specific topic, we do have DSpace Interest Groups and DSpace Working Groups available.
• Other general ways of contributing to DSpace (both technical and non-technical) can be found at How to Contribute to DSpace

Candidate Features for DSpace 7.0 - Priority 1

The DSpace 7.0 release is under development and the latest status can be found at DSpace Release 7.0 Status. The below candidate features are ordered in terms of importance to the 7.0 release. As such, the goal is to achieve each feature in the order that they appear (and not all features are guaranteed to be completed in time for 7.0). However, if you or your institution would like to drive or lead the development of a specific feature, you are welcome to volunteer your time towards any of the candidate features listed, no matter where that feature ranks in the listing. For larger features/contributions, we recommend first forming a Working Group (anyone can chair or form a Working Group) to allow other institutions to contribute to your initiative.

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DSpace currently maintains two user interfaces in parallel (JSPUI and XMLUI). To replace these two user interfaces, we are building a new, single, out-of-the-box user interface on Angular.io.

• Introducing the New DSpace User Interface (at OR16)
• DSpace UI Prototype Challenge
• Design - Single UI Project

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For reference:

• End User Use Cases
• Admin UI Use Cases

Also see: DSpace 7 UI Project Plain Language Summary

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DSpace's current REST API, while functional, is limited in features and does not follow current best practices for RESTful APIs.

To support the new, single user interface (on Angular.io), we are building / designing a new REST API that follows modern best practices such as: HATEOAS, ALPS, and using the HAL response format.

The new REST API is being built using Spring technologies (Boot, MVC, and HATEOAS).

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Goal 3: Can be "extended"

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Goal 4: Integration with external services

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New REST Contract (work in progress):

• https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract

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• Remove Elasticsearch Usage Statistics, see DS-3455
• Disable/Remove Legacy (log based) Statistics, see DS-3454

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• Dependent on / related to "Single User Interface"

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DSpace needs a clear definition of what constitutes a "DSpace module", so that third-parties can create, maintain and distribute their own "modules" as add-ons to DSpace, and distribute them via a public "registry".

• Design - Module Framework and Registry

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The DSpace deposit process should integrate more closely with external data sources, in order to automatically populate (or suggest) data on deposit. We should also investigate whether some integrations may allow opportunities for Administrator's to autopopulate DSpace from trusted, external content sources.

• Design - Lower effort to deposit

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Goal 1: Fundamentals of IR

Goal 4: Integration with external services

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• Integrations - Integrations that significantly lower the effort to fill DSpace with content, both from in house systems and third party content
• Integrations - Linking to other data sources search for available data
• Integrations - Importing data from discipline-specific systems into DSpace
• End User - Email Deposit of bitstream for automatically captured metadata

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Short Term - Priority 2

As "priority 2" features, these features are less likely to be implemented in the next DSpace release, but are still seen as a priority in an upcoming release. Nonetheless, we'd encourage community members to volunteer to help achieve any of these features. If there is community interest in moving one or more of these features forward, that feature may be moved up to "priority 1" for the next release.  These features are ordered in terms of importance, but are all considered to be lower importance than the "priority 1" features listed above.

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• Structure - Support for hierarchical metadata formats (e.g. METS / MODS)

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DSpace should support defining relationships between objects (especially at the Item and Bitstream level). Some object relationships may be definable via metadata, but should be respected by the DSpace UI.  But, in other situations, it may also necessitate the creation of new types of Objects (e.g. Author objects as Authors of an Item rather than simply textual metadata)

• Primary use case description: Structure - Relationships between objects
• This feature should also investigate whether there are opportunities to better integrate or utilize the new RDF-based interface to describe / define object relationships within DSpace.

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• Structure - Relationships between objects
• Structure - Apply licenses to bitstreams

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DSpace's required hierarchy of Communities and Collections should be replaced with a more flexible module of supporting Collections & Sub-Collections.

• Design - Simplify Community and Collection Hierarchy
• Also see alignment with PCDM, which simply has hierarchical Collections

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• Structure - Community and Collection hierarchy (or generic containers)

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• Primary use case description: Basic Statistics (and all child pages)
• This would likely be depending on the "Single User Interface" project for much of the enhancements, as many of these reports are UI related.

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• Stats/Metrics - Basic Statistics (and all child pages)

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• See linked use cases for more details of possible enhancements to existing basic preservation functionality

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• Admin UI - Basic Preservation - Fixity Checking
• Admin UI - Basic Preservation - Format identification
• Admin UI - Basic Preservation - Format validation
• Admin UI - Format reporting

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• Dependent on / related to "Single User Interface"
• Primary use case description: Easy and Intuitive Deposit Interface
• May need further definition around what sorts of changes will make deposit easier?

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Goal 1: Fundamentals of IR

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Longer Term Features / Priorities

While these features are unscheduled at this time, we still encourage volunteers to begin to analyze or tackle them. If there is interest in moving one or more of these features forward in the nearterm, we can immediately schedule it for an upcoming release.  These features are unordered, but are all considered priorities for DSpace moving forward.

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• Dependent on some Priority 1 features (e.g. Single UI, Configs in Admin UI)

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• There was an older Installer Prototype which attempted some of this, but was not successful. It may be worth revisiting that prior work/experience, if just for use cases.
• Ability to perform an installation from a CD/DVD or offline is also of importance to institutions where network speeds are lower (mentioned at OAI9 in Geneva in 2015)
• Vision: Installing DSpace could mean simply installing its UI. Once the UI is installed, you would be prompted to optionally install plugin(s) which enable OAI, SWORD, REST, etc.

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• Dependent on some Priority 1 features (e.g. Single UI, Configs in Admin UI
• Could be helped by "Theme management in Admin UI"

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• Likely an optional module or external integration, therefore it may be dependent on a "Module Framework" being developed
• Ranked very highly in 2013-14 Vision Survey

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• Stats/Metrics - Advanced Statistics
• Others under "uc-stats-metrics" label

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While DSpace currently supports some basic theming in the XMLUI interface, management of such themes is performed via command-line configurations and tweaks. We should find a way to make Themes selectable and tweakable via the Admin UI, like other modern web facing systems.

• Dependent on "Single User Interface"
• Could be highly beneficial to "Easier Upgrade Process" in that theme management is a huge pain point of the existing upgrade process
• Ranked lower in 2013-14 Vision Survey

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• Ranked lower in 2013-14 Vision Survey

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In DSpace, a "Bundle" object is just a simple grouping of Files (Bitstreams) (e.g. "THUMBNAIL", "TEXT"). Rather than being its own object, a "bundle" could be more easily replaced with metadata on individual Bitstreams (e.g. dc.type="thumbnail"), or even relationships between Bitstreams (i.e. derivative objects).

• Primary use case description: Structure - purpose of bundle layer
• May also be dependent on or related to "Relationships between Objects" project
• Also see alignment with PCDM, which simply uses metadata on files

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• Structure - purpose of bundle layer
• Structure - Describe Individual Bitstream within an Item
• Structure - Support for derivative objects

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• Likely an optional module or external integration, therefore it may be dependent on a "Module Framework" being developed
• Ranked lower in 2013-14 Vision Survey

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• Admin UI - Advanced Preservation - Format Migration
• Admin UI - Advanced Preservation - Format characterization
• Others under "uc-preservation" label

Maintenance

With the release of DSpace 7.6 in June 2023, the 7.x platform has moved into maintenance mode. This means that all future 7.x releases will only include bug or security fixes.  (Improvements to existing translations or user interface accessibility are also accepted as that are considered bugs.) 

• Release Numbering: Because 7.x releases all included new features (as described in DSpace Release 7.0 Status), Steering and Developers have agreed that future 7.x releases should all use the "7.6.x" number scheme (e.g. 7.6.1, 7.6.2, etc).  This clarifies that 7.6 was the final release which will include new features. Starting with 8.0, we will revert to our usual numbering scheme where 8.0 will accept new features, but 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 will only include bug fixes.
• Support plan: DSpace 7.6.x will be under support until it is no longer one of the most recent three (3) major releases per our DSpace Software Support Policy.  As DSpace is moving back to a release schedule of one major release per year, this means that 7.6.x will be supported until DSpace 10.0 is released (tentatively scheduled for 2026).
• Release Schedule: DSpace 7.6.x bug-fix releases will occur whenever major issues require immediate resolution or a larger number of smaller issues are ready for immediate release.  They have no fixed timeline, but will be announced on mailing lists when available.
• Development Activities: DSpace 7.6.x development activities occur on our DSpace 7.6.x Maintenance Project Board.
  • Development discussions related to DSpace 7.6.x occur in our weekly Developer Meetings

DSpace 8.0 Development

DSpace Steering Group finalized the roadmap / plans for 8.0 in their meeting on June 28, 2023 (immediately after the 7.6 release).  This plan was presented to the Leadership Group on August 9, 2023 (notes are public).

8.0 Release Goals

These are the main priorities for the 8.0 release as decided by the DSpace Steering Group.  The overarching goal is to keep the 8.0 release smaller in size (in terms of new features), and find ways to help the community more easily upgrade to 7.x or 8.x.

1. Attempt to include all (in progress) major features which missed the 7.x series of releases.  Specifically, this includes these four features: 
   1. COAR Notify support (4Science & Harvard): Implementation of the COAR Notify protocol in DSpace 8
   2. Correction service to enhance data quality via OpenAIRE Graph (4Science): https://4science.github.io/oaire-eld/ and https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/8184
   3. Porting "REST-Based Quality Control Reports" from old REST API to new one. (U of Laval, Canada): https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/7641
   4. Duplicate Detection in Submission ported from DSpace-CRIS (The Library Code): https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/1732 and https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/8415
2. Accept new features which empower users in the Admin User Interface.  In other words, any new features which make things easier for administrators would be accepted.  However, at this time, this work is unfunded and would need to be provided by volunteers.
3. Accept community contributions of any 6.x features which missed the 7.x series of releases.  At this time, this work is unfunded and would need to be provided by volunteers
4. Improve documentation, training to allow for greater community contributions. This also may include easing the setup/installation/customization or maintenance of DSpace.

8.0 Release Schedule

8.0 will be released in April 2024.  8.1, 8.2, 8.3 will be bug-fix only releases (with release dates to be determined later)

DSpace Steering has set a goal of having all future DSpace major releases in April of each year.  For example, 9.0 would be in April 2025, 10.0 in April 2026, etc.

8.0 Development Activities

DSpace 8.0 development activities occur on our DSpace 8.0 Project Board.

Development discussions related to DSpace 8.0 occur in our weekly Developer Meetings

Future Research / Planning

In parallel to the 8.0 release, the Developer team (via Developer Meetings) will work on some early proof of concepts which may be included in 9.0 or later.  Some of these early proof-of-concepts currently include work to modularize DSpace (e.g. DSpace 8 Angular : library-based architecture proposal) and improve the storage layer (e.g. via OCFL or similar).  To take part in these discussions, please join future Developer Meetings.

How to help

DSpace is a global collaboration and most of our activities are entirely volunteer based (including code development). 

• To help with development activities (claiming/prioritizing tickets, testing new fixes, etc) please consider joining future Developer Meetings, or getting in touch via Slack or GitHub.  We welcome anyone and everyone to contribute.  Contributions can be in writing code, reviewing others code, or even simply testing someone else's code works properly.
• To help with documentation (e.g. https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x), please create a Wiki account (email wikihelp@lyrasis.org) and get in touch with Tim Donohue (via Slack or email) to ask for edit access to the documentation.
• To help brainstorm/suggest new features, consider joining the DSpace Community Advisory Team meetings or mailing lists.  This is our interest group for repository managers and they help suggest future features to DSpace Steering and developers.
• To help others (and perhaps yourself), consider joining our Mailing Lists and Slack.  These are the primary ways that people ask questions and support one another in using DSpace
  • Additional Support options are documented on our Support page.

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• See various unmet use cases labeled "Search/Browse"
• Dependent on "Single Search / Browse System" feature being completed, to ensure we can more easily implement new Search/Browse use cases
• Some use cases also dependent on "Single User Interface" being completed

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While directly related to the "Single Approval Workflow system" feature (above), DSpace's workflow system(s) do not yet meet all community use cases for approval workflows.

This feature is a placeholder for enhancing the Approval Workflow system based on the Workflow Use Cases (see list in the "Use Cases" column). However, it is likely somewhat dependent on standardizing on a single Workflow system.

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Integrations

While integrations are very important to DSpace, these integrations projects are "unscheduled" as of yet. Some of these integrations are "ongoing activities" (e.g. search engine optimization), while others require further definition, or their design may be affected by one or more of the candidate features listed above. Nonetheless, if there is interest in moving one or more of these features forward in the nearterm, we can immediately schedule it for an upcoming release. These integrations are unordered, but are all considered priorities for DSpace moving forward.

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• Related: Integrations - Linking to repository content through a learning management system

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• Related to Integrations - Support external authorities (ORCID) in Authority Cache
• Also related Integrations - Support for external identifiers (ORCID) in the CSV Batch edit
• ORCIDs exist in DSpace 5.x, but these use cases suggest enhancements to that system

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• Provide an ability to stream video in-browser (likely using third-party integrations or tools)
• Related to End User - Visitor can play media hosted on an external streaming media server

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• Provide an ability to stream/view (textual) documents (e.g. PDF) in-browser

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• Provide an ability to stream/view/zoom/pan images in-browser
• Related to End User - Image file display (pan, zoom, size options)

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• Search Engine Optimization
• While this exists in DSpace, SEO is an ongoing activity and can always be improved upon

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