Page History

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An overview of the version history, including links to older versions of an item, is available at the bottom of an Item View page. The repository administrator can decide whether the version history should be available to all users or restricted to administrators. Since DSpace 6 the repository administrator can decide whether all users should be able to see the version submitter/editor or if this information is restricted and can be seen by administrators only. As this may expose data that my be considered personal (name and email address of the submitter), we encourage everyone to leave the default setting and reveal those information to administrators onlyBy default, this information is available to all users.  Information displayed includes the version number, Submitter/Editor name (only if enabled), date, and summary/description.  As necessary, you may change the visibility of this table or the "Editor" column using the "Version History Visibility" configurations below.

Architecture

Versioning model

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By default, all users will be able to see the version history. To ensure that only administrators can see the Version History, enable versioning.item.history.view.admin in the [dspace]/config/modules/versioning.cfg OR in your local.cfg file.

versioning.item.# Setting this to "true" will hide the entire "Version History" table from
# all users *except* Administrators
versioning.item.history.view.admin=false

Allowing submitters to version their items

With DSpace 6.0 it became possible to allow submitters to create new versions of their own items. The new versions are going through the normal workflow process if the collection is configured this way. To allow submitters to create new versions of Item they originally submitted, you have to change the configuration property versioning.submitterCanCreateNewVersion and set it to true. It is part of the configuration file [dspace]/config/modules/versioning.cfg but can be overridden in your local.cfg too.

Identified Challenges & Known Issues

Item Level Versioning has a substantial conceptual impact on many DSpace features. Therefore it has been accepted into DSpace as an optional feature. Following challenges have been identified in the current implementation. As an early adopter of the Item Level Versioning feature, your input is greatly appreciated on any of these.

Conceptual compatibility with Embargo

Lifting an embargo currently does not interact with Item Level Versioning. Additional implementation would be required to ensure that lifting an embargo actually creates a new version of the item. 

Conceptual compatibility with Item Level Statistics

Both on the level of pageviews and downloads, different versions of an item are treated as different items. As a result, an end user will have the impression that the stats are being "reset" once a new version is installed, because the previous downloads and pageviews are allocated to the previous version.

One possible solution would be to present an end user with aggregated statistics across all viewers, and give administrators the possibility to view statistics per version.

Exposing version history

The version history is added on the bottom of a versioned item page. A repository administrator can either decide to show this to all users, or restrict it to admins only. If it is shown to admins only, an end user will have no way to find the way to an older version. Since DSpace 6 you can also configure if the submitter's name and email address should be part of the version history or if they should be hidden. To show the submitter might actually be useful if the editor account is always a generic institutional email address, but may conflict with local privacy laws if any personal details are included.

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Hide Submitter details in version table

In either the [dspace]/config/modules/versioning.cfg configuration file or your local.cfg, you can customize the configuration option versioning.item.history.include.submitter. By default this is set to false, which means that information about the submitter is only viewable by administrators. If you want to expose the submitters information to everyone (which be useful if all submitters uses generic institutional email addresses, but may conflict with local privacy laws if personal details are included) you can set this configuration property to true.

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Hide Editor/Submitter details in version table

In either the [dspace]/config/modules/versioning.cfg configuration file or your local.cfg, you can customize the configuration option versioning.item.history.include.submitter. By default this is set to false, which means that information about the submitter is only viewable by administrators. If you want to expose the submitters information to everyone (which be useful if all submitters uses generic institutional email addresses, but may conflict with local privacy laws if personal details are included) you can set this configuration property to true.

# This property controls whether the name of the submitter/editor
# of a version should be included in the version history of an item.
# Set to "true" to show the submitter to all users who have access to the table.
# Set to "false" to hide the submitter information from everyone except Administrators
versioning.item.history.include.submitter=false

Allowing submitters to version their items

With DSpace 6.0 it became possible to allow submitters to create new versions of their own items. The new versions are going through the normal workflow process if the collection is configured this way. To allow submitters to create new versions of Item they originally submitted, you have to change the configuration property versioning.submitterCanCreateNewVersion and set it to true. It is part of the configuration file [dspace]/config/modules/versioning.cfg but can be overridden in your local.cfg too.

Identified Challenges & Known Issues

Item Level Versioning has a substantial conceptual impact on many DSpace features. Therefore it has been accepted into DSpace as an optional feature. Following challenges have been identified in the current implementation. As an early adopter of the Item Level Versioning feature, your input is greatly appreciated on any of these.

Conceptual compatibility with Embargo

Lifting an embargo currently does not interact with Item Level Versioning. Additional implementation would be required to ensure that lifting an embargo actually creates a new version of the item. 

Conceptual compatibility with Item Level Statistics

Both on the level of pageviews and downloads, different versions of an item are treated as different items. As a result, an end user will have the impression that the stats are being "reset" once a new version is installed, because the previous downloads and pageviews are allocated to the previous version.

One possible solution would be to present an end user with aggregated statistics across all viewers, and give administrators the possibility to view statistics per version.