Overview

The Audit feature in DSpace offers a structured way to capture and review significant events across DSpace objects. It tracks changes to content, metadata, and other key operations, allowing administrators to:

• Monitor system activity for compliance purposes

• Troubleshoot issues

• Maintain a historical record of interactions

Functionality

At its core, the auditing system logs events that modify the state of DSpace objects, including:

• Creation

• Updates

• Deletions

• Removals

Each audit event captures detailed contextual information:

• Event type

• Object affected

• User who performed the action

• Timestamp

• (Optional) metadata for additional insight

• (Optional) checksum for bitstreams

Audit events are managed through a dedicated service layer for storing and retrieving records. A system listener observes internal operations and identifies which events should be logged, ensuring only meaningful actions are recorded.

For external access, a REST API exposes audit data, allowing system administrators to inspect or filter logs based on specific criteria.

Configuration and Access

Auditing can be toggled through a configuration setting:

audit.enabled = true

When enabled, the feature begins capturing events automatically. Additional properties:

• audit.item.in-workflow: Enables auditing of items in the workflow state

• audit.item.in-workspace: Enables auditing of items in the workspace

Note: Ensure the new audit core has been deployed to the SOLR service.

Administrators can view audit logs via the REST endpoint:

/api/system/auditevents

This endpoint supports filtering (e.g., by object UUID) and provides detailed information for each event. For example:

/api/system/auditevents/{id}

returns the full details of a specific event.

Solr Core management

Export example:

./dspace solr-core-management --mode export --core audit --directory /tmp/export --format csv --threads 4 --increment WEEK

Import example:

./dspace solr-core-management --mode import --core audit --directory /tmp/export --format csv --threads 2

Script parameters

Audit Logs

By default, when auditing is enabled, audit event logs are also written to configurable log files. This is managed through the log4j2.xml configuration file. The logging level for audit events can be set using the following property:

<Property name='loglevel.audit.events'>ALL</Property>

• ALL can be used to track all the Audit details

• OFF can be used to turn off the Audit Log trace

Administrators can adjust the logging behavior and destination by modifying the log4j2.xml file as needed.

Logging audit events to the audit.log file is not alternative to indexing data on SOLR. All the Audit events are stored on SOLR as well so data be easily accessible from the DSpace UI

Audit Logs Example

Community Audit Example

Item Audit Example