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This paper provides a detailed examination of the challenges, gaps, and problems that institutions may face in moving to the DSpace 7 platform from previous versions or from different and various platforms such as EPrints, Invenio, etc., and the implementation solutions already successfully rolled out in such instances. Through the use of live examples, the presentation aims to illustrate the complexities and nuances of migrating repositories to DSpace 7. 4Science has developed standard procedures that identify pitfalls and decision points and related best practices that will be shared with the audience to help define a better and more informed planning of this often critical phase. The transition and evolution to DSpace 7 represents a great opportunity to rethink the repository structure and provide new services to users. Even for institutions coming from previous versions, this evolution is much more than an upgrade; it is essentially a transition to a new platform. From this point of view, the challenges and opportunities go beyond the technical ones. By sharing the experience gained from dozens of migrations to DSpace 7, we hope to help other institutions facing this challenge to make the process as smooth and successful as possible.

In a Digital Library environment, we can define Digital cultural landscapes as "virtual ecosystems" in which digital cultural heritage subsets are related with entities such as people, places, events, fonds, etc., according to different visions and interpretations, in a pluralism generating new knowledge and opening up new perspectives. These virtual ecosystems today can be easily structured by cultural institutions, using a popular application such as DSpace, the world's most widely used open source Digital Asset Management System. Extending the DSpace data model by means of the Configurable Entities and enriching the platform with new features, indeed, it is possible to go beyond the traditional boundaries of the Digital libraries, structuring a complex system of relationships between entities, to be explored through networks and structured paths, building new narratives thanks to interdisciplinarity and the coexistence of different domains. The paper aims at illustrating, through sharing experiences and reflections from numerous Digital Library projects managed with DSpace, how this application can contribute to the modeling of new digital cultural landscapes.

DSpace-CRIS is the first open source CRIS/RIMS platform in the world. It was born with the idea to put the repository at the core of the information ecosystem of Universities and with the ambition to bring utmost prestige and value to adopting institutions. Other approaches, usually promoted by communities less supportive to the open world, CRIS systems put the Repository to a side, subtracting resources, duplicating efforts and creating competing projects. Since its first release as open source, the Open Repository conference has represented a pivotal date in the year to look at the new achievements and future direction of the DSpace-CRIS project and its large user base of hundreds of installations around the world: this year,the DSpace-CRIS new developments since OR2022 and the updated project roadmap will be presented highlighting the relation with the parent DSpace project and the possible convergences.

DSpace-CRIS is the first open source CRIS/RIMS platform in the world. In 2022 the project will reach is 10th anniversary since the first open-source release of the version 1.8.2 alfa took place in November 2012. Technically it is a fork of the DSpace platform, but the two communities have always walked together with the aim of bringing all the general purposes features of DSpace-CRIS to the main community. With version 7 and, especially, with the introduction of configurable entities in DSpace, the gap between these two "cousin" projects has been drastically reduced. However, thanks to the DSpace-CRIS community's increased experience in dealing with very complex use cases that have only recently found their way into “simple” DSpace, there are still many areas where DSpace-CRIS provides more advanced and still unique functionalities. The presentation will summarize unique features and characteristics of DSpace-CRIS over DSpace in 7 minutes.

Open Repository 2021 will sign the momentum of the DSpace and DSpace-CRIS 7 release. This presentation will demonstrate the key features of DSpace-CRIS explaining how it differs from a plain DSpace in providing a full fledged open source CRIS system promoting open science. Indeed, other than allowing to record data about any kind of entities and their relation DSpace-CRIS focus on end-to-end functionalities to support business processes and expectations such as - the self management of researcher profiles with a full bidirectional ORCID integration; - project, funding and awards management providing the ability to track and organize them over time adding more details and information when needed; - simplify the administration, improve the data quality and reduce the administrative burden; - extended interoperability supporting the most richer exchange formats such as OpenAIRE CERIF. DSpace-CRIS 7 is a production-grade, ready-to-use, CRIS solution under real usage and data load, with early adopters also at National scale. The DSpace-CRIS 7 is not just a revamp of the features already available in previous versions but taking the opportunities offered by the new modern architecture provides completely new features and integrations. Migration path from previous versions will be discussed.

The presentation will illustrate the new REST API introduced in DSpace 7 to support the development of the new Angular UI and provide a strong integration layer. A full fledged REST API open unlimited interoperability opportunities with other systems (both locally and globally). The presentation will illustrate the adopted architecture, standards and approach showing how to interact with the new REST API to get and manipulate information. Concrete integration scenario will be discussed explaining how they can be now supported.

In recent years there has been an increasing need to position institutional repositories in a broader context that enhances research opportunities and facilitates the discovery of resources. This presentation is about DSpace-CRIS and DSpace-GLAM, in their new version compatible with DSpace 7, with renewed features built with the updated technology stack of DSpace 7: Angular and REST API, their characteristics and novelties, and how their adoption can empower the role of repositories within academic, research, and cultural heritage institutions. The migration process for both DSpace-CRIS/GLAM and DSpace users that want to enhance their repository with the additional features and capabilities provided by version 7 will be presented. DSpace-CRIS and GLAM are continuously being aligned with DSpace versions and support is provided through the same community channels. Finally, the future roadmap of the project will be discussed, in the same way as in the last ten years when ideas and features blossomed in DSpace-CRIS were later adopted by the standard DSpace distribution. The community is numerous and growing and the exchange of experiences is beneficial for all organizations.

Friuli-VeneziaGiulia (FVG) "Regional Scientific System" includes three Public Research Institutions, three Universities, four International Institutions, four Technological parks in FVG region in North-East Italy. In 2014 the three Universities started to cooperate for a common research output inside a project named UnityFVG: UnitedUniversities-FVG. They already have 10 years experience in OA with four Institutional Repositories (DSpace/DSpace-CRIS based) and more than 100,000 Research Publications. So they decided to provide a single point of access under a new Regional Research Portal based on DSpace-CRIS. The project, with the technical support of Cineca consortium, offers a great opportunity to improve the interoperability of DSpace-CRIS based solutions. The European standard for the research domain, CERIF, is the best option to drive rich information to the portal in a standard and reusable way. A plugin/patch for DSpace will be freely available to enable data export using CERIF-XML over OAI-PMH. CERIF-XML will be available for all the main entities (People, Projects, Organizations, Journals, Conferences, Dataset, Publications and metrics). The DSpace OAI-PMH harvester will be extended to support ingestion of complex, interconnected information as provided by the CERIF-XML format. This will enable content replication between DSpace-CRIS instances and easy setup of public OA oriented portals.

Friuli-VeneziaGiulia (FVG) “Regional Scientific System” includes three Public Research Institutions, three Universities, four International Institutions, four Technological Parks in FVG region in North-East Italy. In 2014 the three Universities started to cooperate for a common research output inside a project named UnityFVG: United Universities-FVG. They already have 10 years experience in OA with four Institutional Repositories (DSpace/DSpace-CRIS based) and more than 100,000 Research Publications. So they decided to provide a single point of access under a new Regional Research Portal based on DSpace-CRIS. The project, with the technical support of Cineca consortium, offers a great opportunity to improve the interoperability of DSpace-CRIS based solutions. The European standard for the research domain, CERIF, is the best option to drive rich information to the portal in a standard and reusable way. A plugin/patch for DSpace will be freely available to enable data export using CERIF-XML over OAI-PMH. CERIF-XML will be available for all the main entities (People, Projects, Organizations, Journals, Conferences, Dataset, Publications and metrics). The DSpace OAI-PMH harvester will be extended to support ingestion of complex, interconnected information as provided by the CERIF-XML format. This will enable content replication between DSpace-CRIS instances and easy setup of public OA oriented portals.