DSpace 7.6 is now available!

DSpace 7.6 is now available!

We are pleased to announce the release of DSpace 7.6!  This release provides new features and many improvements and bug fixes for the 7.x series of releases.

To install DSpace 7.6 for the first time, see Installing DSpace.

The 7.6 release concentrates on porting older 6.x features into 7.x, resolving one Tier 2 priority and two Tier 4 priorities in our  7.x technical roadmap. Many donated features, improvements and bug fixes are also included in this release.

As announced in April, the 7.6 release is the final 7.x release to include new features. The 7.x platform will now move into maintenance mode and future releases will only include bug fixes.

New and improved features include:

  • Bulk Access Management allows someone with administrative privileges (site wide or over a single object) to perform bulk modifications to the permissions of objects they administer. (Developed and co-funded by 4Science with the Support of University of Cambridge)
  • Support for selecting Primary Bitstream for archived Items, similar to version 6.x.
  • Item counts can now be displayed for all Communities/Collections, similar to version 6.x. (Donated by damian-joz)
  • Browse Hierarchical Controlled Vocabularies This new feature allows users to browse/search for items quickly using the same controlled vocabulary configured in your submission forms.  (Donated by Atmire)
  • Signposting support for items and bitstreams. This new feature embeds signposting links/metadata into pages and responses, to better support FAIR guiding principles. (Developed and donated by 4Science)
  • Import Simple Archive Format Zip files from a remote URL. This feature enhances the existing batch import feature to allow you to specify the URL of the ZIP file to import. (Developed and donated by 4Science) 
  • ImageMagick Thumbnails for Video files (MP4). A new plugin can be used to generate thumbnails from Video files. (Donated by Abel Gómez) 
  • Ability to map Item submission forms via Entity Type, in order to easily configure a submission form for all Collections accepting the same Entity Type. See the Configurable Entities documentation. (Donated by Paulo Graça)
  • New default Privacy Statement and End User Agreement. The new default text of these policies can be found by visiting the links in the footer of our demo site. (Donated by DSpaceDirect)
  • Oracle support has been removed as was previously announced in March 2022 on our mailing lists.

A partial list of other fixes include: 

  • User interface upgraded to Angular 15
  • Performance improvements for Items with many bitstreams (Donated by Michael Spalti)
  • Various bug fixes Browse by functionality (Donated by Atmire, Michael Spalti and eScire)
  • Various bug fixes to Search functionality (Donated by Atmire, eScire, Arvo Consultores and Agustina Martinez)
  • Various bug fixes to submission forms (Donated by Atmire, 4Science, eScire, Mark Wood, Alan Orth and others)
  • Various bug fixes to built-in Statistics (Donated by Atmire and Nicholas Woodward)
  • Various bug fixes to permission inheritance (Donated by Agustina Martinez and Kim Shepherd)
  • Various bug fixes to administrative tools (Donated by 4Science, Atmire, D&L, and others)
  • Various bug fixes to Request a Copy (Donated by Arvo Consultores and Mark Wood)
  • Accessibility improvements (Donated by Adam Doan, Atmire and eScire)
  • Numerous other bug fixes and improvements. See the Release Notes for details.

New and improved Language support: 

  • French (Français) language updates donated by Pierre Lasou (pilasou)
  • German (Deutsch) language updates donated by fapsi and Sascha Szott (saschaszott)
  • Hungarian (Magyar) language updates donated by Nagy Akos (akoscomp)
  • Italian (Italiano) language added & donated by 4Science
  • Portugese (Português) language updates donated by Ricardo Saraiva (rsaraivac)
  • Spanish (Español) language updates donated by vlguerrero
  • Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) language added & donated by VuNguyen (Zerosoul1990)

A total of 45 individuals contributed to 7.6, with major institutional contributions coming from 4Science and Atmire.

Some features/improvements in the 7.6 release were supported by the DSpace Development Fund. We gratefully recognize the generous financial support of all institutions who have donated to this fund.

For a full list of changes and contributors in 7.6, see our Release Notes.

Would you like to contribute towards our next major release (8.0)?

DSpace 8.0 will be released in 2024. 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 to 8.0 - As a volunteer developer you can determine which issue ticket you’d like to work on. Please get in touch with Tim Donohue if you have any questions.

To install DSpace 7.6 for the first time, see Installing DSpace.