Release Notes

 
Welcome to Release 7.0, the next major release of the DSpace platform.  Any previous version of DSpace may be upgraded to DSpace 7 directly. For more information, please see Upgrading DSpace.

7.0 Release Notes

The following is a list of the new features included for the 7.x platform (not an exhaustive list):

• XMLUI and JSPUI are no longer supported or distributed with DSpace. All users should immediately migrate to and utilize the new Angular User Interface.
  
• ElasticSearch Usage Statistics have been removed.  Please use SOLR Statistics or DSpace Google Analytics Statistics.
• Configuration has been upgraded to Apache Commons Configuration version 2. For most users, you should see no effect or difference. No DSpace configuration files were modified during this upgrade and no configurations or settings were renamed or changed. However, if you locally modified or customized the [dspace]/config/config-definition.xml (DSpace's Apache Commons Configuration settings), you will need to ensure those modifications are compatible with Apache Commons Configuration version 2.  See the Apache Commons Configuration's configuration definition file reference for more details.
• Some commandline tools/scripts are now enabled in the new REST API (e.g. index-discovery):  See new Scripts endpoint: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/blob/master/scripts-endpoint.md

Milestones

DSpace 7.0 will be the largest release in the history of DSpace. It is the culmination of strategic planning by DSpace Governance in response to community feedback, use cases and needs (for additional details see Strategic Planning)

Achievement	More details
(2014-15) Governance creates a Strategic Plan for modernizing & refreshing DSpace for the future. A key goal of this plan is a "single, out of the box user interface" to replace the aging XMLUI and JSPUI.	DSpace 2015-18 Strategic Plan
(2015-16) Community competition for different UI prototypes. Nine were reviewed / analyzed for inclusion as the single, future DSpace UI.	DSpace UI Prototype Challenge
(2016) Formal selection of Angular as new UI framework, replacing both the XMLUI and JSPUI. New Angular UI that is modern, responsive, and built using a Bootstrap theme for easy customization.	"Introducing the new DSpace User Interface" talk at OR2016 DSpace 7 UI Project Plain Language Summary
(2017) Adoption of a standards based REST API to maximize exposure of all DSpace features for integration purposes: A completely redesigned REST API that is self-documenting and human browsable.	"On the Road to DSpace 7 : Angular UI + REST" at OR2017 DSpace 7 UI Project Plain Language Summary
(2017-19) Redesigned submissions and workflows  featuring a one page submission process with a drag-and-drop interface & a searchable MyDSpace.	Configuration changes in the submission process
(2017-19) Configurable entities, an optional new item type inspired by the DSpace-CRIS project that allows for complex linked relationships between items. For example, Items can now represent a Person (Entity) to provide a way to support "researcher profiles", and link that person to the works they authored.	Initial Investigation WG: DSpace Entities Working Group (2017-18) Implementation WG: DSpace 7 Entities Working Group (2018-19)
(May 2019) Preview release, including Entity demonstrator and associated data set	DSpace 7 Preview Release
(2019-20) Docker installation and deployment procedures	Try out DSpace 7 ("Install via Docker" section)
(Jan 2020) Established a new Staged Beta Release Process for 7.0, spacing out major features over a series of smaller Beta releases & delaying some low priority features for later 7.x releases. Paid/funded development began.	DSpace Release 7.0 Status
(March 2020) Beta 1 released	Beta 1 Release Notes
(April 2020) Beta 2 released	Beta 2 Release Notes
(July 2020) Beta 3 released	Beta 3 Release Notes
(Oct 2020) Beta 4 released	Beta 4 Release Notes
(April 2021) Beta 5 released	Beta 5 Release Notes
Testathon	April 19 - May 7, 2021
OR2021 Talks / Workshop	June 7-10, 2021
Final bug & accessibility fixes prior to 7.0 release	See 7.0 work board
(Aug 2, 2021) 7.0 release	DSpace 7 Press Release Release Notes
(Nov 1, 2021) 7.1 release	Release Notes
(Feb 7, 2022) 7.2 release	Release Notes
(June 27, 2022) 7.3 release	Release Notes
(October 10, 2022) 7.4 release	Release Notes
(February 20, 2023) 7.5 Release	Release Notes
(June 26, 2023) 7.6 Release	Release Notes
(November 15, 2023) 7.6.1 Release	Release Notes
7.6.x Ongoing 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 and will adopt a "7.6.x" numbering scheme.	RoadMap

A full list of all changes / bug fixes in 7.x is available in the Changes in 7.x section.

6.0 Acknowledgments (TODO: Update for 7.0. This list is from 6.0)

The following individuals have contributed directly to this release of DSpace:  Tim Donohue, Mark H. Wood, Pascal-Nicolas Becker, Kevin Van de Velde, Ivan Masár, Hardy Pottinger, Terry Brady, Andrea Schweer, Philip Vissenaekens, Peter Dietz, Jonas Van Goolen, Tom Desair, Dylan MEEUS, Luigi Andrea Pascarelli, William Welling, Christian Scheible, Andrea Bollini, Aleksander Kotyński-Buryła, Ondřej Košarko, Jozef Mišutka, Chris Wilper, Ilja Sidoroff, Roeland Dillen, Bram Luyten, Marsa Haoua, Claudia Jürgen, Kim Shepherd, Art Lowel, Ivo Prajer, Petr Karel, Mini Pillai, Facundo Gabriel Adorno, Luiz Claudio Santos, Robin Taylor, Tim Van den Langenbergh, Arnaud de Bossoreille, Bill Tantzen, Tiago Guimarães, Oriol Olivé Comadira, Àlex Magaz Graça, Anne Lawrence, Brad Dewar, Bruno Nocera Zanette, David Baker, Ed Goulet, Mateusz Neumann, Monika Mevenkamp, Pablo Buenaposada, Patricio Marrone, Petya Kohts, Eike Kleiner, Antoine Snyers, Bjorn Jaspers, Chris Herron, Dan Scott, David Cook, Davor Cubranic, José Carvalho, Jozsef Marton, Juan Manuel Catá, Panagiotis Koutsourakis, Pantelis Karamolegkos, Pedro Príncipe, Philippe Gray, Rodrigo Prado de Jesus, RomanticCat, Saiful Amin, junwei1229, Keith Gilbertson, Nicolas Schwab, Pablo Buenaposada, Michael Marttila, samuel, tmtvl , and others who reviewed and commented on their work.  Many of these could not do this work without the support (release time and financial) of their associated institutions. We offer thanks to those institutions for supporting their staff to take time to contribute to the DSpace project.

A big thank you also goes out to the DSpace Community Advisory Team (DCAT), who helped the developers to prioritize and plan out several of the new features that made it into this release. The current DCAT members include: Augustine Gitonga, Bram Luyten, Bharat Chaudhari, Claire Bundy, Dibyendra Hyoju, Elin Stangeland, Felicity A Dykas, Iryna Kuchma, James Evans, Jim Ottaviani, Kate Dohe, Kathleen Schweitzberger, Leonie Hayes, Lilly Li, Maureen Walsh, Pauline Ward, Roger Weaver, Sarah Molloy, Sarah Potvin, Steve Van Tuyl, Terry Brady, Yan Han and Valorie Hollister.

We apologize to any contributor accidentally left off this list. DSpace has such a large, active development community that we sometimes lose track of all our contributors. Our ongoing list of all known people/institutions that have contributed to DSpace software can be found on our DSpace Contributors page. Acknowledgments to those left off will be made in future releases.

Want to see your name appear in our list of contributors? All you have to do is report an issue, fix a bug, improve our documentation or help us determine the necessary requirements for a new feature! Visit our Issue Tracker to report a bug, or join dspace-devel mailing list to take part in development work. If you'd like to help improve our current documentation, please get in touch with one of our Committers with your ideas. You don't even need to be a developer! Repository managers can also get involved by volunteering to join the DSpace Community Advisory Team and helping our developers to plan new features.

The Release Team consisted of:

• Tim Donohue (DuraSpace)
• Kevin Van de Velde (@mire)
  
• Pascal-Nicolas Becker (Technische Universität Berlin)

Additional thanks to Tim Donohue from DuraSpace for keeping all of us focused on the work at hand, for calming us when we got excited, and for the general support for the DSpace project.