DSpace 2013 Vision Document

DSpace 3-5 Year Vision

The following statements describe, at a high level, what goals the DSpace open source product should strive to meet:

• DSpace will focus on the fundamentals of the modern "Institutional Repository" use case. We are (re-)building the IR for the next 5-10 years.
• DSpace will be re-architected to be "lean", with agility and flexibility as primary goals.
• DSpace will include a "core" set of functionality that can be "extended" (think Wordpress-like plugins) or have "hooks" (integration points) to complimentary services/tools
• DSpace will be designed in such a way that it can be easily/quickly configured to integrate with new & future tools/services in the larger digital scholarship "ecosystem"
• DSpace will support low-cost, hosted solutions and deployments (by featuring an easy, "just works" setup)

For more details about each of these goals, see the Use Cases & Features listed below

DSpace Use Cases / Features

What follows is a (rough) listing of core use cases & features that DSpace should strive to meet, based on the vision detailed above:

Primary / Core Features

The following features are considered primary use cases of DSpace. Therefore, these features should be immediately available in "out-of-the-box" DSpace and should require no extra installation/setup:

• Basic Functionality:
  
  • Create, Read, Update Delete (CRUD) on objects
  • Versioning of objects
  • Basic Search & Browse functionality
  • Basic Preservation functionality (e.g. Fixity checks)
  • Basic Statistics (or "hooks" into external statistics engines)
• Content Model
  
  • Should support a Community & Collection "like" hierarchy 
    
    • Doesn't necessarily require Communities and Collections to be separate object types. They could just be a single "Container" type of object.
  • Items are the primary type of object.  Items include File(s).
    
    • Note: Old concept of "bundles" may need rethinking.
  • New object type:  Author objects
    (which hold metadata about authors/researchers in the system)
  • Persistent Identifier support for all objects
  • Support for object derivatives (e.g. thumbnail images)
  • More flexible relationships between objects
    
    • Including aggregations of objects & complex objects
• Metadata
  
  • Structured Metadata
  • Metadata should be at all levels of object hierarchy.
    
    • Administrative/Preservation Metadata at all levels, including on individual Files
  • Hierarchical Metadata formats should be supported
• Upload / Download of Content:
  
  • Self deposit & mediated (approval workflow based) deposit of content
  • Batch Deposit of content (from a UI)
  • Batch Download of content (from a UI)
  • Large File support for End Users
    
    • End Users should be able to upload and download large files themselves
• Access controls (Authentication & Authorization)
  • Authorization controls at all levels of object hierarchy
  • Also includes Embargo-style access controls
• User Interface Functionality
  
  • Single, default out-of-the-box User Interface
    
    • Preferably some sort of template-driven UI framework
  • User Interface should be "SEO Friendly"
  • Configuration Management takes place in the UI
  • UI Template/Theme Management takes place in the UI
• Standard Machine Interfaces
  
  • Some high priorities: OAI, SWORD, REST API
  • When possible, machine interfaces should be able to target content at any level (Community, Collection, Item, File, Author)
• Licensing support
  
  • Both deposit license and Creative Commons licensing
• Ability to easily "hook" into external tools & services
  
  • e.g. something like Curation Tasks & other more robust ways to integrate with other tools/services

Possible Extensions

The following features may or may not be available in "out-of-the-box" DSpace. It's arguable whether these are primary use cases that DSpace should support. It's possible some of these features could be handled by plugins which you install in DSpace, or by "hooks" into external services.

• Richer Licensing support (individual CC licenses on individual files)
• Support for Delivery of Media
  
  • Doc Viewers / Page Turners
  • Geospatial
  • Streaming content
• Alt-metrics (downloads, tweets, etc.)
• Support for small scale research data sets
  
  • Relationship back to publication (linked)
  • Also may include software programs
• Metadata extensibility
  
  • Stronger support for channeling user contributed metadata
  • Schema agnostic
• Compliance with Open Access directives (of various countries)
  
  • models to track with general worldwide OA directives
  • when possible, methods to check compliance
  • when possible, support for automated evaluation
• Improved Statistics (could be external, e.g. Google Analytics)
• Improved Support for External Identifiers (DOIs. Handles, etc.)
• Customized / Flexible UI support
  
  • e.g. Users should be able to change their Collection's "theme"
    or "template"

NOT Provided "Out-of-the-Box"

The following features are NOT considered primary use cases of DSpace. Therefore, these features would NOT be provided by "out-of-the-box" DSpace.  They would either need to be implemented as plugins to DSpace, or DSpace would integrate into external services/tools which provide these features.

• Advanced Statistics engine
  
  • Instead should look towards better integration with Google Analytics, or other external statistics engines
• Advanced Preservation Activities
  
  • Instead should provide integration with external preservation tools / services (via Curation Tasks or something similar)
• Digital Publishing Activities
  
  • Instead, should provide integration with external publishing systems
• CRIS (Current Research Information System) functionality
  
  • Instead, DSpace should integrate with external CRIS systems, or offer a CRIS plugin.