[Dspace-general] What DSpace could learn from IR+

[Bram Luyten]

Disclaimer: this post was originally formatted as a Facebook Note, so the
version below might not contain all the images, layout, ... See the original
version here: http://bit.ly/aJWlQw

IR+ is the newly launched Open Source Repository platform, originally
developed by the University of Rochester.

As the university was a long time user of DSpace, highlighting a struggle to
recruit content as early as
2005<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=271812408767&h=593d20e8da998e32e4020652173f9e26&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dlib.org%2Fdlib%2Fjanuary05%2Ffoster%2F01foster.html>,
I was very surprised to read in Wired Campus that launching a new, in-house
developed platform, was one of the key points in the strategy to cope with
the issues from the
past<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=271812408767&h=f67420d0f735a50a13c479afb16954b8&url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle.com%2FblogPost%2FAs-Open-Access-Chatter-Grows%2F20807%2F%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DFeed%253A%2Bchronicle%252Fwiredcampus%2B%2528The%2BChronicle%253A%2BWired%2BCampus%2529%26utm_content%3DTwitter>
.

In the short article on
Wired<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=271812408767&h=f67420d0f735a50a13c479afb16954b8&url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle.com%2FblogPost%2FAs-Open-Access-Chatter-Grows%2F20807%2F%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DFeed%253A%2Bchronicle%252Fwiredcampus%2B%2528The%2BChronicle%253A%2BWired%2BCampus%2529%26utm_content%3DTwitter>,
the claim is made that DSpace lacks the key functionality for having a
workspace, and easily customizable Researcher Pages.

If you think of these arguments in the context of the Sticks vs Carrots
arguments in promoting access, this approach clearly works on the "carrot"
side, trying to convince people to adopt open access with new features.
(while the most common "stick" approach is a deposit mandate, or using the
repository as sole academic bibliography source for staff promotions etc).
Now, examples of both stick and carrot approaches have been proven
successful and unsuccessful in the past. It will be very interesting to see
whether Rochester really hit the "sweet spot" of functionality that
researchers are longing for.

Although I didn't actually install and run the IR+ platform, I took the time
to run through its
manuals<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=271812408767&h=98c471d0a3ab7ab1edc8f86324e5958f&url=https%3A%2F%2Furresearch.rochester.edu%2FresearcherPublicationView.action%3FresearcherPublicationId%3D16>,
to see what DSpace could really learn from IR+, feature wise.

Here's my list, please comment, or illustrate which of these you think would
really substantially improve DSpace:

Elaborated user account settings

   - Multiple Email Addresses
   - Publication Name Management (especially useful when you get married
   during the course of your academic career)
   - An overview of accepted licences

Researcher Pages

   - File & Link association
   - Pictures

The researcher pages offer nice "profile" functionality, which is way better
than currently offered in DSpace, but way lagging behind the current state
of the art in this field (Facebook, Linkedin, ResearchGate, ...). Social
features on the Researcher pages are lacking (colleague list, comments,
...), as well as integration of external services (blogs, twitter feed, ...)

User Workspace

   - File and Folder Management
   - Share files with other users
   - Version management: upload new versions for files
   - File locks & Permission mechanism

The implementation of User Workspaces gave me a very Google-Docs like
feeling, but without the in-browser editors. Uploading & downloading files,
and managing them locally on a PC could possibly be a show stopper here. But
the version management, permission & locks and sharing system seem well
implemented.

Submission

   - Multiple collection selection for one submission
   - File(s) selection first
   - Collection(s) selection last

As opposed to the DSpace submission process, IR+ starts from the file
upload, and adds metadata provision afterwards. This would be useful in any
approach where some metadata could be automatically generated from the
uploaded file.

Also interesting is the approach where the collection of choice, to which
the item should be submitted, happens all the way at the end of the
submission proces. It's also possible to submit to multiple collections.

The software could be used to implement both a repository, as well as a
referratory: it's possible to add a new "publication" without adding a file,
but adding a hyperlink to an external resource instead.

An embargo system is present, but has an impact on a whole item, instead of
the individual files. I could upload a summarized presentation about an item
as well as the full text, which is effectively under embargo, but the
embargo settings would have an impact on both of them.

Authors or co-authors are defined by text details (name, first name), ...
but don't seem to have an (institution) identifier. It's not clear whether
it's possible to differentiate between co-authors from the institution, and
external ones.

<http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3201385&op=1&view=all&subj=271812408767&aid=-1&auser=0&oid=271812408767&id=123797926589>
(Co-)Author entry screen


The way *versioning is handled*, both in the area of workspaces, as well as
published content, is really interesting. At this point, it isn't really
clear if the platform really avoids that 2 researchers submit the same
publication, or how duplicates are dealt with in general.

In my personal opinion, 2 main difficulties in DSpace have not been
addressed, and persist in IR+. It looks like the data model for published
items is more or less as rigid as the one from DSpace: a hierarchy of
collections can contain items, and these items can contain bitstreams. At
the same time, there are no possibilities to relate items to eachother. So
let's say some publications are part of the same virtual research project
collaboration: apart from a keyword association, or being contained in the
same collection, there seems to be no way to relate these items to
eachother.

There is also no reference to which statistics or reports can be generated
or visualized.

*Final verdict*

Researcher pages, versioning, the idea of a collaborative workspace could
really be useful additions to DSpace, as well as a few general tweaks that
were implemented in IR+. In the context of DSpace 2 development, I think
quite a lot can be learned.

However, the most important limitations of DSpace (from a data model point
of view) persist in this platform. Judging by the 2009 work on the DSpace 2
data model, those will be effectively tackled in DSpace 2.

On a very personal level, I think it's unfortunate that the obviously
talented developers didn't implement their ideas as a contribution or patch
on DSpace.

More about IR+:
http://code.google.com/p/irplus/

Hope a nice discussion & some useful JIRA Feature requests could arise from
this.

regards,

Bram

@mire - http://www.atmire.com

Technologielaan 9 - 3001 Heverlee - Belgium
533 2nd Street - Encinitas, CA 92024 - USA

http://www.togather.eu - Before getting together, get Tog at ther
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