Contribute to the DSpace Development Fund
The newly established DSpace Development Fund supports the development of new features prioritized by DSpace Governance. For a list of planned features see the fund wiki page.
Candidate Features for DSpace
Feature Categories
Features have been grouped into rough "categories" as follows:
- Structure: Features that relate to the architecture/structure of content within DSpace
- Administrative: Features which are mostly administrative functions/activities
- End User: Features relating to how end users interact with the system (deposit, download, search)
- Integrations: Features which are either used by external systems (or programs) or interact themselves with an external system
- Stats/Metrics: Features relating to metrics or statistics around content and its usage
Status explanation
- Arguably, DSpace meets most major use cases already. (However, there still may still be areas for improvement or enhancement.)
- DSpace meets some of the major use cases, but there are other major use cases which it does not yet meet.
- DSpace does not really meet these use cases, yet.
| Candidate Feature | Category | Status | Core | Non-core | Survey Average Importance* 10 = very, 5 = moderately, 0 = not imp. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create / manage files and metadata (as an Item) | Structure | | x | 10.00 | ||
| Community and Collection hierarchy (or generic containers) | Structure | / (no generic containers) | 7.37 | |||
Create new versions of existing Items | Structure | (disabled by default, limited) | 5.92 | |||
| Support for derivative objects (e.g. thumbnails, coversheets) | Structure | (thumbnails & text extraction only) | 6.52 | |||
| Metadata for all levels of object hierarchy (e.g. for Communities and Collections) | Structure | | 6.99 | |||
| Relationships between objects (e.g. Author items as Authors of an Item rather than textual metadata) | Structure | | 8.17 | |||
| Support for hierarchical metadata formats (e.g. METS / MODS) | Structure | | 7.10 | |||
| Item approval workflows | Administrative | | 7.88 | |||
| Item embargo facility | End User / Administrative | | 8.64 | |||
| Support for flexible licensing, including Creative Commons | End User | | 8.44 | |||
| CRIS functionality (Current Research Information System: researcher pages and automated publication feeds from external data providers) | End User | (though, DSpace-CRIS is available) | 5.51 | |||
| Search and browse for Items | End User | | 9.41 | |||
Easy and intuitive deposit mechanism for users | End User | (arguable) | 8.86 | |||
Batch deposit (multiple item deposit via the user interface) | End User | | 8.59 | |||
Batch download (multiple item download as a single file) | End User | | 6.91 | |||
Authentication with common single-sign-on systems (e.g. LDAP, Shibboleth) | Integrations | | 8.52 | |||
Most configuration takes place via the administrative user interface | Administrative | | 7.61 | |||
Template-driven user interface for easy branding | Administrative | | 7.53 | |||
User interface and theme management takes place via user interface | Administrative | | 6.47 | |||
Search Engine crawler-friendly user interface | Integrations | | 8.91 | |||
Specialised content delivery mechanisms (media players, page turners, document viewers) | End User | | 6.83 | |||
| Content streaming (video player) | End User | | 6.92 | |||
| Basic preservation (fixity checks) | Administrative | | 8.33 | |||
| Format identification and reporting | Administrative | (simplistic identification, no reporting) | 7.00 | |||
| Advanced preservation services (e.g. format migration) | Administrative | | 6.61 | |||
| Persistent identifiers: handles | Integrations | | 8.32 | |||
| Additional external persistent identifiers: DOIs, DataCite | Integrations | (basic support only) | 7.56 | |||
| Other external identifiers: ORCID | Integrations | | 7.22 | |||
| Basic statistics (item access counts, file downloads) | Stats/Metrics | (limited reporting) | 9.03 | |||
| Advanced statistics (search terms, geographical locations) | Stats/Metrics | (limited reporting) | 8.13 | |||
| Altmetrics | Stats/Metrics | | 7.30 | |||
| Open Access status tracking and compliance checking | Stats/Metrics / Integrations | | 7.27 | |||
| Standard repository machine interfaces (e.g. OAI-PMH, SWORDv2, ResourceSync) | Integrations | (but, no ResourceSync) | 8.11 | |||
| REST API for building external applications | Integrations | (beta) | 7.56 |
Formula for "Survey Average Importance"
The "Survey Average Importance" represents average importance ranking of all respondents for a single feature from the 2013-14 DSpace Vision Survey (Survey results linked off of: DSpace 2013 Vision Discussions)
- Very Important = 10 points
- Moderately important = 5 points
- Not important = 0 points
So, for example, "Community and Collection Hierarchy" had 50 respondents rank it "Very important" (10 points each), 37 rank it "Moderately important" (5 points each), and 6 rank it "Not important" (0 points).
This is an average score of ((10 x 50) + (5 x 37)) / (50 + 37 + 6) = 7.37 average (which is midway between a "moderately important" and "very important" ranking)
A spreadsheet was used to calculate all average scores. See the attached DSpace_Vision_Survey_Feature_Rankings.xls
Non-Functional Goals for DSpace
| Non-functional Goal | Use Cases / Details |
|---|---|
| Easy to install / deploy |
|
| Easy to upgrade |
|
| Scalability / Performance | (needs better definition) Suggestions:
|
| Attractive to new developers |
|
| Attractive to new Repository/Content Managers |
|
| Avoid centrally maintaining duplicative codebases/functions |
|
Overview
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