Global perspectives on Open for All.

By mid-2026, the de facto standard for repositories will be renewed with the release of DSpace 10. At 4Science, we are working on a key initiative: the integration of the DSpace-CRIS extension into the core platform. DSpace-CRIS, the first extension implementing CRIS functionalities for DSpace, introduces an innovative approach to entity linking through the existing Authority Framework. On the other hand, the standard DSpace platform relies on a different mechanism, the Relationship Framework.

This proposal outlines our analysis of the differences between these two frameworks, the strategies adopted to ensure their coexistence during the merge process, and the best practices for their correct and efficient use in the new unified architecture. Future DSpace releases will aim to deliver a fully unified solution.

The Audit Trail feature in DSpace 10 provides repositories with a robust mechanism for tracking, recording, and reviewing all actions on repository items. This presentation will demonstrate how the feature enhances transparency, accountability, and compliance with institutional policies. We will explore the design of the Audit Trail, its integration with DSpace workflows, and practical use cases such as tracking items creation, metadata changes, and bitstream/bundle events. We will highlight how repository administrators can leverage this feature to maintain a complete record of repository activity. The presentation will also discuss the technical implementation, including the underlying data model, APIs, and integration with the DSpace user interface also providing a quick glance at how the Audit trail can be further improved tracking additional information.

Fedora is an open-source digital repository platform supporting the long-term preservation of digital objects and has been in use for over 20 years. Current versions of Fedora offer users the flexibility to manage and store a wide variety of digital content types, leveraging the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) within its persistence layer to support durability and reduce future migration barriers. Late in 2025, the Fedora Program Team released Fedora 7.x, which is the first major version release since Fedora 6.x in 2021. The project continues to build on its digital preservation roots while delivering a more modern and secure platform. Fedora 7.x includes updates to over 40 dependency libraries, strengthening the software foundation and improving maintainability for the community.

In this Repository Showdown, the Fedora Team will share a community update, discuss the current state of the technology, and outline the program’s priorities for future work. Presenters will highlight how Fedora supports digital preservation today and into the future.

Join us for a showcase of Hyku, an open-source, multi-tenant repository platform built on the Samvera stack and maintained by the Samvera community. Hyku is designed to support consortial and shared repository environments as well as single-institution deployments, enabling multiple tenants to operate within a single application while maintaining local control over branding, workflows, and metadata.

This Repository Showdown presentation will highlight recent Hyku developments and future directions following community-led work over the past year. We will demonstrate Hyku’s flexible metadata system, which allows administrators to define and version metadata schemas without code changes, including context-based workflows tied to Admin Sets. We will also discuss improvements to bulk ingest and migration workflows, accessibility and usability alignment with Hyrax, and ongoing work to modernize persistence and performance in large, shared Hyku environments. Finally, we will share upcoming roadmap priorities and opportunities for coordinated development across Hyku deployments.

Join us for a showcase of Hyrax, an open-source repository front end maintained and supported by the Samvera community. Hyrax powers institutional, data, and digital collections repositories with its flexible deposit workflows, broad file type and metadata capabilities, and IIIF support. This Repository Showdown presentation will highlight new features and future directions for Hyrax following community-led development over the past year.

We will share how we incorporated Hyku’s flexible metadata feature, refined accessibility conformance, and improved performance. We will also share our plans for joint development with Hyku led by our new Technical Coordinator.

A large proportion of scientific studies now rely on software and data as an integral component of the research process. Significant time and resources are committed to the development of research software yet, too often, these valuable assets lie languishing, hidden in the original research paper that presented them. Ensuring the availability of software and data, and directly linking these assets to the research that first introduced them, is a key component in addressing current problems faced by many scientists when attempting to replicate earlier studies. There have been a number of efforts in recent years to develop methodologies for the extraction and classification of software mentions found in full text scholarly documents. In this presentation, we will discuss how large language models can match current SotA approaches to the problem utilising zero-shot methods that require no pre-training.

The long-term preservation of research outputs increasingly depends on software preservation, as data in many disciplines are inseparable from the computational tools used to generate and interpret them. While repositories have established robust practices for preserving data and publications, software remains fragile due to short lifecycles, complex dependencies, and rapidly evolving technological environments. Archiving source code alone is often not enough.

This presentation reports on the progress of a repository-based approach to preserving running applications. Building on an earlier proof of concept, the project has evolved into an operational repository service. Recent developments include improved container ingestion workflows, clearer separation between preservation and execution layers, standardized packaging practices, and controlled, sandboxed execution environments that lower technical barriers while addressing security concerns.

In parallel, the project has focused on collaboration with researchers, particularly in the digital humanities, to better understand software development practices and to develop guidance, documentation, and support structures for long-term preservation. Rather than proposing a single solution, this work outlines a practical path forward and highlights open questions regarding standards, interoperability, and FAIR principles for research software, contributing to ongoing community discussions on the preservation of executable software.

Archipelago Commons, is an open source repository platform developed and supported by the Digital Services Team at the Metropolitan New York Library Council. We support over 30 deployments in the United States and internationally, as well as the wider community of self or vendor managed implementations at libraries, archives, and museums.

Created in 2018, Archipelago has achieved a steady, healthy maturity with 8 major releases since its first public version in 2019, paired with a stable development roadmap. Our platform consists of slim, innovative custom-coded Drupal modules, a curated list of trusted community built software, custom service containers and well documented zero-to-production deployment strategies.

Archipelago features a flexible open-schema metadata approach, dynamic and on-the-fly schema transformations and deep IIIF API integrations supported by a vast and ever growing variety of Media and data viewers.

Our 2025 focus was on improved discovery, better date processing math, UI vector integration for semantic search and ML-assisted cataloging and clustering, new batch ingest and background processing options, and also out-of-the box AI/ML bot harvest mitigation tools.

Our presentation will focus on community favorite features, lessons learned and our future roadmap.

The Dataverse Project is an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze research data. It facilitates making data available to others, and allows researchers to replicate others' work more easily. Researchers, journals, data authors, publishers, data distributors, and affiliated institutions all receive academic credit and web visibility.

In this presentation, we will first introduce the project and discuss the core architectural principles defining the software, as well as the robust open source community. We will then review updates from last year, highlighting key features from each release and the current status of the re-architecture project separating the front end UI from the back end APIs.

An overview of Islandora in the context of the latest generation of Open Source Digital Repository solutions, highlighting core functionality, integrations and collaborations with other Open Source projects/communities, and a showcase of live repositories. This presentation will also include an update on Islandora Foundation activities and accomplishments from the last year.

Sustaining open knowledge exchange depends on the reliability and trustworthiness of scientific data repositories. Certification frameworks provide structured benchmarks for best practices in repository management, stewardship, and preservation. However, attaining and maintaining certification can be complex, particularly for institutions facing resource or capacity constraints. The World Data System’s (WDS) Certification Subcommittee has developed guidance to support both formal certification and informal self-assessment processes.

This presentation will explore how certification and self-assessment contribute to balancing openness with long-term resilience by embedding FAIR and TRUST principles, robust preservation strategies, and adaptive governance into repository operations. The presenter will share lessons learned from recent WDS initiatives that lower barriers to participation, including peer-support networks and practical tools for continuous improvement. In addition, the presentation will address how certification criteria are evolving in response to emerging technologies—ensuring that repositories remain responsive to new opportunities while mitigating potential risks.

By fostering a culture of quality assurance through shared standards and collaborative assessment, the WDS community strengthens the global infrastructure for open science. Attendees will gain actionable insights on integrating certification and self-assessment into their own repository practices to enhance trust, sustainability, and inclusivity.

Digital repositories face an approaching crisis: digital objects increasingly circulate without institutional context, while rapid advances in generative AI make it difficult for users to distinguish authentic content from altered or fabricated material. Approaches that attempt to detect AI-generated content are unreliable and will soon be obsolete. Repositories must prepare for the shift from users asking “how can we tell this is fake?” to “how can we tell this is real?”

This presentation describes Northwestern University Libraries’ exploration of Content Credentials, an emerging content authenticity infrastructure based on the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity standards, as a proactive strategy for asserting authenticity and provenance. Over the past year, we have investigated how Content Credentials might be integrated into a digitization and repository workflow. We share our rationale for pursuing this approach and discuss why early adoption may benefit cultural heritage institutions. Attendees will gain practical insights into how Content Credentials could be adapted to their own repository environments and how early experimentation can help cultural heritage institutions maintain trust in an uncertain digital future.

DSpace is one of the most widely adopted open source repository platforms with over 3,300 recorded installations. Currently, at the version 10 major release, DSpace is positioned to merge the DSpace and DSpace CRIS communities in time for its 25th anniversary in 2027. This presentation will review DSpace history, its growth, and potential as it expands and supports more ways to convey and share information.

The repository showdown contribution will demonstrate some of the key development highlights from the last year of EPrints3 development with contributions from both the main EPrints3 service providers and developers as well as the wider community. Development of the EPrints3 platform continues to represent emerging trends in the open research ecosystem as repositories both co-exist and co-develop alongside CRIS platforms, as well as data-archiving and preservation solutions. EPrints3 has also responded to changes in the research landscape including the growing prominence of research assessment exercises and the transitions of third party services such as IRUS-UK to OpenAIRE PROVIDE. The last year also sees a major development with EPrints becoming EPrints3 - a rebranding of the platform to truly reflect the breadth and pace of development as new versions of EPrints3 are released.

InvenioRDM, is a next-generation, sustainable, modular, turnkey repository and research data management platform supporting FAIR practices, research transparency, and discovery of a wide range of research outputs. Both the back-end of Zenodo.org and a free, community-supported open source software, InvenioRDM meets user needs by employing powerful search features, DataCite metadata fields, ORCiD- and ROR-enhanced creator and contributor fields, and much more. Partners in this project include developers, librarians, administrators, and other professionals in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America.

The adoption of the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) has become a cornerstone of Open Science, guiding practices aimed at improving the quality, transparency, and reuse of scientific data. In the context of CRIS (Current Research Information Systems), these principles play a strategic role in supporting the integration, standardization, and governance of scientific information on a national scale. This article analyzes the application of the FAIR principles within the Brazilian Scientific Research Information Ecosystem (BrCris), developed by the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (Ibict), with the aim of discussing how its technical and organizational practices contribute to building a more reliable, interoperable, and reusable scientific data infrastructure. The methodology adopted is based on a literature review of the FAIR principles and a document analysis of technical reports, scientific articles, and institutional materials related to BrCris. The results indicate that BrCris shows significant progress in adopting the FAIR principles, especially in the use of persistent identifiers, semantic data integration, interoperability with international infrastructures, and the availability of data in open and reusable formats. It is concluded that BrCris constitutes a strategic infrastructure for the implementation of the FAIR principles in Brazil.

FAO AGRIS is a global, FAIR-compliant information system that aggregates and disseminates agricultural research from over 2,000 institutions worldwide, with strong participation from the Global South. Contributing organizations provide standardized metadata, while full texts remain hosted on local or external platforms, accessed through persistent links.

Many institutions, particularly in resource-constrained settings, lack the capacity to maintain institutional repositories, leaving their research poorly indexed or invisible globally. FAO AGRIS addresses this gap by decoupling global discoverability from local infrastructure. Institutions can submit metadata through lightweight workflows, which FAO AGRIS curates and enriches with AGROVOC to enable global discovery.

FAO AGRIS functions as shared infrastructure for metadata standardization and interoperability, increasing visibility, supporting FAIR access, and enabling research reuse, policymaking, and Sustainable Development Goal monitoring.

DSpace 10.0 is due to be released in May/June 2026. This major release is the first (of

two) to include features from DSpace-CRIS in order to achieve a merger of both

products.

This presentation will discuss the new features and improvements arriving to the

DSpace platform that arrive in 10.0, including those coming from DSpace-CRIS. These

new features include an audit trail, ability to customize URL paths for items, authority

framework enhancements, etc. The exact set of features released with version 10.0 will

be announced in April/May.

We’ll briefly discuss the ongoing maintenance releases for 9.x, 8.x and 7.6.x, including

the end to support for 7.6.x with the release of 10.0.

In addition, we will provide an overview of the DSpace and DSpace-CRIS merger

process, including the roadmap towards completing the merger in the DSpace 11.0

release, due in May/June 2027.

With a view to supporting the ongoing development of DSpace, we’ll conclude by

providing ways that individuals can contribute to these upcoming releases, along with

ways that institutions can support DSpace by becoming a member.

Interface language plays a key role in making repositories accessible to everyone. When users do not

sufficiently share the language of a repository’s interface, content can become difficult or even impossible to

find, despite being present in the system. In addition to translation, technical details such as search

configuration, character handling, and interface layout can have a major impact on how well a repository

works for different languages.

Because most DSpace development happens in English-speaking environments, language-related challenges

outside that context are often underestimated. Over time, DSpace has added support for many interface

languages, which can give the impression that multilingual support works flawlessly out of the box. In

practice, many institutions still struggle—especially when working with non-Latin alphabets, right-to-left

languages such as Arabic or Hebrew, or combinations of multiple languages.

This presentation looks at common multilingual scenarios in DSpace, from adding a single non-English

language to supporting multiple languages with different writing directions. Using real-world examples, it

highlights frequently overlooked issues around search configuration, language-specific behaviour, interface

rendering, and metadata. While the topic is technical by nature, the focus is on clear explanations that are

accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences.