DSpace 8.0 is now available!
Holger Lenz
We are pleased to announce the release of DSpace 8.0! This major release provides new features, performance improvements and bug fixes to the DSpace platform.
Updates and Features
Security fixes:
Fix CVE-2024-38364 (low severity) by disabling the ability to open HTML/XML bitstreams in a user's browser. See https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/9638 (or mailing list announcement) for more details & configuration workaround.
New and improved features include:
OpenAIRE Data Correction: this feature provides a basic integration with the OpenAIRE Content Provider Dashboard via the Notification Broker. It allows repositories who have subscribed to the OpenAIRE Notification Broker to import JSON data from OpenAIRE in order to enhance or correct the metadata of Items in the repository. (Made possible thanks to the OpenAIRE Call Innovation funded project "Enrich local data via the OpenAIRE Graph” awarded to 4Science.)
OpenAIRE Publication Claim: this feature provides a closer integration between DSpace and the OpenAIRE Publication REST API. It allows DSpace to import possible publications from OpenAIRE for users having a Researcher Profile in DSpace. (Made possible thanks to the OpenAIRE Call Innovation funded project "Enrich local data via the OpenAIRE Graph” awarded to 4Science.)
COAR Notify Protocol: DSpace now supports the COAR Notify Protocol for sending & receiving Linked Data Notifications (LDN) messages from external systems. DSpace is able to register external LDN services to send or receive messages from. This allows users to request review/endorsement from an external service (supporting COAR Notify) during the Item submission process. It also allows these external services to send event notifications into DSpace's Quality Assurance tool. (Donated by COAR and 4Science)
Request Withdrawal or Reinstatement: Optionally, all logged-in users are able to request that a specific Item be withdrawn or reinstated using the new DSpace Quality Assurance tool (Donated by 4Science, partially funded by University of California - California Digital Liberary)
Basic Duplicate Detection in submission and workflow: this feature introduces basic duplicate detection into DSpace submission and workflow, using Solr's ability to search by levenshtein distance (Developed by The Library Code with support of TU Berlin, FHNW and ZHAW.)
"Processes" page has been reorganized: To simplify process management through the Administrator UI, the "Processes Overview" page has been restructured to group processes into separate sections for "running", "scheduled", "completed" and "failed". These sections update automatically. (Donated by Atmire)
Improved "Primary Bitstream" management: Submitters can now define if a bitstream is a "primary" bitstream directly on the submission page after a file has been uploaded. On the Item page, the primary bitstream now has a badge. (Developed by 4Science, funded by the University of California - California Digital Library)
Search Tab on Community/Collection pages: All Community and Collection pages now include a "Search" tab. (Donated by Atmire)
Search Facets on Homepage, Community/Collection pages: Optionally, search facets/filters can now be displayed on home page and all Community, and Collection pages. (Donated by DSquare Technologies and Atmire)
Advanced Search options: Optionally, a new "Advanced Search" filter can be enabled on the Search page to provide advanced search capabilities. (Donated by DSquare Technologies)
Lookup via external sources from the Edit Item page (Relationship tab): When editing an Entity, on the "Relationships" tab you can now click the "+Add" button to lookup and import related entities from supported external sources. (Donated by Atmire)
Import via DOI searches multiple sources at once (CrossRef, DataCite) (Donated by University of Bamberg)
Edit Metadata using Authority Control lookup: Users are now able to edit metadata controlled by vocabularies in item's metadata edit form in the same way that is done in submission form. (Donated by Toni Prieto)
Rioxx v3 OAI profile support (Donated by Agustina Martinez, Cambridge University)
Research Organization Registry (ROR) Integration. (Donated by 4Science)
Administrator Reports (beta): The beta release of the Administrator Reports provides the ability to run the reports and display the results in the User Interface (similar to the "DSpace REST Quality Control Reports" from version 6.x). (Donated by Université Laval)
This list has been abbreviated. Additional new features are listed in the Release Notes
Breaking Changes
We now include a “Breaking Changes” section to the Release Notes to notify you of major changes which may impact your upgrade. Please visit the Release Notes for the full details.
A few key changes to be aware of in DSpace 8.0:
Backend now requires Java 17 and Tomcat 10
Frontend now runs on Angular 17 (migrated to standalone components) and requires Node 18 or 20.
The deprecated REST API v6 (from DSpace 4.x - 6.x) has been removed.
Other Major Updates and Improvements
Apache Tomcat is now OPTIONAL for the backend. A new Runnable JAR exists for the DSpace backend which embeds the latest version of Tomcat within it. This Runnable JAR can be used to run the DSpace Backend without installing Tomcat. See the Installing DSpace guide for more details (Donated by 4Science)
Performance improvements were made to Server Side Rendering (SSR), indexing, media-filter, submission, workflow, and many other areas of the application.
Accessibility fixes/improvements were made to header, navbar, sidebar, communities/collections, search, browse, MyDSpace, etc.
Numerous other bug fixes and improvements. See the Release Notes for details.
New and improved Language support
(NEW) Arabic (العربية) translation added by KnowledgeWare Technologies Est. and updated by Ahmad Mostafa
Czech (Čeština) translation updates donated by NTK
Finnish (Suomi) translation updates donated by Reeta Kuukoski
French (Français) language updates donated by Pierre Lasou
German (Deutsch) language updates donated by Mirko Scherf, Sascha Szott, and Janne Jensen
Italian (Italiano) language updates donated by 4Science
Polish (Polski) language updates donated by PCG Academia
Portuguese (Português) language updates donated by Ricardo Saraiva and José Carvalho
Portuguese - Brazilian (Português do Brasil) updates donated by Marco Aurelio Cardoso and Thiago Rodrigues
Serbian Cyrillic (Српски) language updates donated by Milos Ivanovic
Serbian Latin (Srpski (lat)) language updates donated by Milos Ivanovic
Spanish (Español) language updates donated by Arvo Consultores y Tecnología. S.L
A total of 94 individuals contributed to 8.0, with major institutional contributions coming from 4Science and Atmire. Over 300,000 lines of code were changed in this release.
For a full list of changes and contributors in 8.0, see our Release Notes.
Would you like to contribute towards our next major release (9.0)?
DSpace 9.0 will be released in 2025. While the scope of this release is still being finalized, we welcome contributions from anyone. Contributions may take the form of:
Contributing money to our DSpace Development Fund - All funds go directly towards development in the next release, and you will be acknowledged on our DSpace Development Fund page.
Contributing code - As a volunteer developer you can determine which issue ticket you’d like to work on. Join our weekly developer meetings or get in touch with Tim Donohue if you have any questions.