Dear DSpace Community,

The DSpace Leadership Group, the DSpace Committers and LYRASIS are proud to announce that DSpace 7.0 Beta 4 is now available for download and testing.  

Beta 4 is the fourth scheduled Beta release provided for community feedback and to introduce the new features of the 7.0 platform. As a Beta release, we highly advise against running this version in production. Rather, we ask that you consider installing it in a test environment, try it out, and report back any issues or bugs you notice through GitHub (UI issues, Backend/API issues).

DSpace 7.0 Beta 4 is deployed for public testing on a dedicated demo site and it can be installed manually or via a Docker “quick install”. Instructions are available at: Try out DSpace 7.

Included in Beta 4

  • Live Import framework (video) support has been added to the Submission Form (and REST API /api/integration/externalsources endpoint). This includes importing from an external API or drag & drop upload of a bibliographic file.
  • Controlled Vocabulary support (video) in Submission Form. Depending on the field configuration, this can include autocomplete of known terms (see default “Subject Keywords” field), dropdown support (see default “Type” field) and hierarchical tree views
  • Curation Tasks are now supported via the Admin UI and the Processes UI. 
  • Import / Export metadata from/to CSV (i.e. Batch Metadata Editing) is now available from the Admin UI.
  • Basic Usage Statistics (video) are available for the entire site, or specific Communities, Collections or Items
    • Support for exchanging usage data to IRUS was added.  See new “irus-statistics.cfg” and DS-626
  • Improved GDPR Alignment (video), including
    • User Agreement required for all authenticated users to read and agree to. 
    • Cookie Preferences are now available for all users (anonymous or authenticated), along with a Privacy Statement.
    • User Accounts can be deleted even if they’ve submitted content in the past.
  • Language preferences are now kept for all users (anonymous or logged in). By default, DSpace will try to use your browser’s preferred language, but you can specify a preferred language just for DSpace.
  • IP-based authorization lets you restrict (or provide access to) objects based on the user’s IP address.
  • Search Engine Optimization: Addition of robots.txt, Sitemaps and Google Scholar “citation” tags. Sitemaps are now enabled by default and automatically update once per day.

Source: DSpace 7 Release Notes

Coming soon

  • Beta 5: Our final beta release will include code cleanup, bug fixes, performance improvements and theming enhancements. Coinciding with this release, we will also be hosting a community-wide 7.0 Testathon to look for any remaining bugs.
  • 7.0 Final Release: The final, production-ready release of 7.0 will be released as soon as all the above Betas have been completed and any outstanding major bugs have been resolved. Roughly estimated at 1-2 months after the last Beta.

More information and the latest changes can be found on DSpace 7 Release Goals.

Thanks to major code contributors!

The following organizations have been major code contributors to DSpace 7.

  • Atmire 
  • 4Science 
  • FCT / RCAAP 

We gratefully recognize the following institutions who together have generously contributed financially to support the DSpace 7 staged release program, and individuals who devoted time to fundraising:

  • Auburn University 
  • Cornell University 
  • Pascal Becker 
  • Dalhousie University 
  • Duke University 
  • ETH Zurich, ETH Library 
  • Fraunhofer Gesellschaft  
  • Imperial College London 
  • Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis 
  • LYRASIS 
  • National Library of Finland 
  • Beate Rajski 
  • Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg – Carl von Ossietzky  
  • Technische Universität Berlin 
  • Technische Universität Hamburg (TUHH) 
  • The DSpace-Konsortium Deutschland 
  • The German Consortium  
  • The Helmut-Schmidt-Universität/Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg  
  • The Library Code GmbH 
  • The Ohio State University 
  • Texas Digital Library 
  • University of Arizona 
  • University of Edinburgh 
  • University of Kansas 
  • University of Minnesota 
  • University of Missouri 
  • University of Toronto 
  • World Bank 
  • ZHAW 

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