[Dspace-general] Week 5: Submission process

[Ryan Scherle]

We're currently running on 1.4.2, but we're busy building our own  
custom submission system for 1.5.x.

What works:
* Account creation.
* Basic management of the workflow for "standard" items.

What doesn't work:
* Creating relationships between submitted items.
* Allowing users to submit multiple items with similar metadata.
* Marking items for embargo or restricted access.
* Submitting items without associated bitstreams.
* Authority control (or "my usual list of coauthors")
* Applying terms from controlled vocabularies.
* Too many pages are displayed and too many button clicks are required.

What do we do that DSpace doesn't handle? We're collecting data files  
associated with articles. This means we need to establish a  
relationship between the article and each data file. No, it doesn't  
work to simply add the data files as bitstreams on the article record;  
the data files need their own metadata. But the metadata can be  
repetitive, which provides a burden to the depositor if there is not  
an easy way to say "create a new record based on this one".

What would an ideal set of processes look like? Check back with me in  
a few months. We're in various stages of fixing everything I listed  
under "what doesn't work". When we're done, the code will be  
available, although it is unclear how many people will be interested  
in the type of workflow we're building...

--- Ryan Scherle
--- Data Repository Architect
--- National Evolutionary Synthesis Center