Meeting Information

Date and Time: April 30, 2025, 15:00-16:00UTC

Meeting link: See calendar invitation

Attendees

• Pascal-Nicolas Becker 
• Isabel Bernal 
• Andrea Bollini (4Science) 
• Lieven Droogmans 
• Jyrki Ilva 
• Erica Johns
• Pierre Lasou  
• Dirk Verdicchio 
• Agustina Martinez-Garcia 

Ex-Officio:

• Tim Donohue 
• Maureen Walsh 
• Holger Lenz 

  Note taker

Apologies

• Holger Lenz 
• Ianthe Sutherland 

Agenda

Notes

Feature and architectural differences of DSpace and DSpace-CRIS

• Tim run through the main features listed in the page developed by the Technology Working Group (https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace-CRIS+and+DSpace+Differences)
• Focusing, at a high level, on use cases and feature differences between the two systems
• Most of the architectural differences relate to entities: additional entities are available in DSpace CRIS and there are differences in how relationships between entities are implemented
• Hierarchical metadata is available in DSpace CRIS
• Ability to customise or edit the item and entity display pages via spreadsheets
• Granular security privileges on metadata fields is available, e.g. for researcher pages/profiles
• Enhanced statistical reports are also available in DSpace CRIS, all of these are built on the same statistics data that DSpace generates and manages
• Ability to export into difference citation formats as well as bibliographic formats from item pages, which is not available in DSpace
• At the submission level, DSpace CRIS has the concept of shared workspaces, i.e. workspace items can be co-edited by different users.
• Enhanced duplicate detection system and metadata extraction from PDFs

Comments/Q&A

• Most features are not related to CRIS with the exception of Researcher profiles, which are enabled by default in DSpace CRIS
  
  • DSpace CRIS has developed a lot of functionality on top of researcher profiles (which are entirely configurable), but those in themselves exist in standard DSpace
  • Researcher profiles was raised as an important feature for some repositories (not CRIS systems)

Q: Are there scalability (performance) differences for the entities models in DSpace CRIS vs. DSpace?
A: To be determined at this point - it mostly related to differences between DSpace and DSpace CRIS on how relationships and virtual metadata are managed, and there are scenarios where one works best than the other. There is also evidence, that existing DSpace CRIS repositories (which all make use of entities) are there are no major performance issues being reported

Strategic Vision Document discussion

• This initial draft document was put together by Holger. 
• It was raised that it is important to recognise what's in this group's charge, and what is being addressed. In cases where the group decides that something in the charge is not needed/already addressed, it still needs to be mentioned in the vision document
• Group discussion on the current draft:    
  • Mission section: clearly state in the document that for the purposes of the vision, we are assuming that the merge is happening.
  • If there is a "Concerns" section in the document, there should be a section on "Benefits / opportunities" of the merger
  • The group discussed in previous meetings where there really are two separate communities, and document currently states this throughout. It is important to consider whether we could state in the document that many DSpace CRIS users see themselves as part of the DSpace community. E.g. there is one community but there are release plans, research management that is different, and those need more clarification
  • Under the assumption that there is one community, some of the deliverables in the charge (govenance transition plan) may not be needed but it is important to address this in the document, and explain why.    
  • Address sections on Goals as they currently reflect the goals (based on the charge) of this group and they should instead reflect the goals of the merger itself
  • It is important to attempt to also incorporate the use cases of a wider DSpace strategy

Next steps

It was discussed how to proceed with the document: the group will have additional days to further add to the document and to agree/disagree on existing comments/suggestions; following from that, Chair and Holger will incorporate agreed suggestions for discussion in the next Group's meeting.

Actions

• Reschedule next Group's meeting as it currently clashes with Steering
• The deadline for the strategic vision document has passed and the Chair of the group will be send an email to Steering to clarify where we are at with the deliverable