we work for
Clients Worldwide
of the top 20 universities in the world
Completed Projects
SaaS Clients
OUR CLIENTS
AMERICAS
Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, California Digital Library, Princeton University, Virginia Tech University, Texas Christian University, Lyrasis, Middle Tennessee State University, Agnes Scott College, Educopia Institute, Queen’s University, José Simeón Cañas University, Concytec
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
COAR, OpenAIRE, EOSC-DIH, OSCE-ODIHR, Global Campus of Human Rights, European University Institute, euroCRIS, Lama Tzong Khapa Institute
GERMANY
Fraunhofer Society, Technical University Hamburg (TUH), University of Kassel, University of Bamberg, University of Göttingen, Bielefeld University, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Helmut Schmidt University, Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, University of Vechta, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW)
SWITZERLAND
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), University of Bern, University of Basel, University of Fribourg, University of St. Gallen, University of Teacher Education St.Gallen (PHSG), University of Neuchâtel, University of Lausanne, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), Franklin University Switzerland
ITALY
Unity FVG, National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), National Institute of AstroPhysics (INAF), Italian Space Agency (ASI), IRCCS Burlo Garofolo (Clinical Research and Care), Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA), Consortium of Health Research (CORIS), University of Milan, University of Trieste, University of Trento, University of Turin, University of Siena, University of Tuscia, University of Bologna Alma Mater, University of Pavia, University of Genova, University of Urbino, University of Salerno, University of Macerata, National library of Naples, Milan Conservatory, Municipality of Reggio Emilia – Library, and more, see the Italian site
OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
Imperial College of London, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), University of Catalonia Services Consortium (CSUC), Cyprus University of Technology, Athena Research Center, University of Coimbra, University of Minho, Jisc, Brunel University London, University College Dublin, University of Amsterdam, Hasselt University, Vienna University of Technology, Fachhochschule Burgenland
AFRICA&ASIA
National University Singapore – NUS, Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Education Singapore, Singapore Polytechnic, National Taiwan University, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, University of Dubai, Prince Sultan University, SAU, Kuwait University, Durban University of Technology, University of Mpumalanga
CORPORATE CLIENTS
Reviewer Credits, HPS, PREX, Scimago Research Group
In 2023, 4Science was awarded a successful tender with the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (ICL) in London. The project contains a project plan to implement a repository based on an extension of DSpace, in its 7.x version. This new repository will replace ICL’s current DSpace installation, providing new features and enabling a more smooth and meaningful user experience. 4Science will provide, in addition to the implementation of the new solution, configuration, system testing, hosting of the platform and its maintenance for 5 years, as well as dedicated University staff training. “
Chosen because of its superior expertise, 4Science will ensure that the migration for ICL will preserve all data, metadata, statistics, users, and permissions, ensuring an effective and secure upgrade of the platform.
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has chosen 4Science as its partner for implementing a state-of-the-art digital repository using the powerful DSpace extension for research information, DSpace-CRIS based on dedicated servers provided thanks to our Long Standing partner AWS. EPFL, one of the top universities and research institutions globally, is well known for its commitment to innovation and excellence. According to the 2023 QS World University Rankings, EPFL is ranked 16th worldwide across all fields. EPFL is recognized as one of the top 10 universities in several engineering disciplines. The Times Higher Education also places EPFL as the 19th best institution globally for Engineering and Technology. These accomplishments highlight EPFL’s position as a global leader in education and research.
EPFL’s decision to transition from INVENIO to DSpace-CRIS was driven by the need for a more robust and flexible data model tailored to their unique requirements. The free and open source DSpace extension DSpace-CRIS (DSPACE-CRIS – 4Science ) provides an extended data model that accommodates EPFL’s specific needs, offering flexibility and functionality. This partnership is a great example of our dedication to providing cutting-edge solutions that enable institutions to achieve their goals.
Founded in 1854, University College Dublin (UCD) is a research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a member institution of the National University of Ireland. It has over 1,400 academic staff and 30,000 students, and it is Ireland’s second largest university after TU Dublin. As a result of an international bid, 4Science was awarded a contract to upgrade and maintain their institutional repository, including harvesting by the RIAN Irish national portal and the integration with the internal Research Information Management System, based on Symplectic Elements. The Research Repository UCD, https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/, based on DSpace-CRIS 7, based on our shared services thanks to our Long Standing Partner AWS, is a digital collection of open access scholarly research publications. It collects, preserves and disseminates freely available publications including peer-reviewed articles, working papers and conference papers created by UCD researchers. 4Science also developed a statistic and analysis module, based on the data collected in the SOLR statistics core, enriched to provide an easy join between statistical data and content metadata, allowing aggregation by community, collection, submitter, author, etc.
Established in 1647 as Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, one of the oldest in the world, the University of Bamberg is mainly housed in historical buildings in Bamberg’s Old Town. It specializes in Humanities, Cultural Studies, Social Sciences, Economics, and Applied Computer Science. Providing specialized training and consultancy, 4Science supported the design, implementation and customization of the Research Information Management System, based on DSpace-CRIS, https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/, and the Professors’ Catalogue, https://professorenkatalog.uni-bamberg.de/, a precious database that includes the profiles of academic teaching staff and other important personalities of the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg since 1648.
Founded in 1930, the Associazione Italiana Biblioteche (Italian Library Association, AIB) is the national association that represents libraries and the profession of librarian in Italy. It takes care of the continuous updating of librarians and issues professional qualification certificates to its members. It is a founding member and represents Italy in the International Federation of Libraries and Library Associations (IFLA) and in the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA). It is also a member of IASL, the International Association of School Libraries. 4Science migrated their journals site to the latest version of Open Journal Systems (OJS) and provides cloud hosting and maintenance: https://riviste.aib.it/.
The University of Bern is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. Regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern, it is a comprehensive university offering a broad choice of courses and programs in eight faculties and some 150 institutes. With around 18,576 students, the University of Bern is the third largest university in Switzerland. The roots of the University of Bern go back to the sixteenth century, when, as a consequence of the Reformation, a collegiate school was needed to train new pastors. As part of its reorganization of higher education, the government of Bern transformed the existing theological college into an academy with four faculties in 1805. Henceforth, it was possible to study not only theology in Bern, but also law and medicine. 4Science was contracted to design and implement, along with university staff, a repository and Research Information System representing the research outputs, researchers’ profiles and project records of the institution. Based on DSpace-CRIS with important customizations and integrated with other internal systems, the platform is going live in Autumn 2021.
Established in Milan in 1607, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Ambrosian Library) is one of the oldest and undoubtedly most important public libraries worldwide, thanks to its large and invaluable ancient collections. The library holds a large number of codices written in Greek, Latin, Italian, and several different oriental languages. Amongst these there are entire collections coming from religious institutions like the Benedictine Monastery in Bobbio, the Augustinian Convent of Santa Maria Incoronata and the Library of the Metropolitan Chapter in Milan, and several collections coming from private sources. In 2018-2019, 4Science was in charge of managing the secure transfer and preservation of the library’s precious collections of digitized manuscripts, comprising almost 2 million images for a grand total of almost 30 TB.
The Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III (National Library Neaples) is the third biggest library in Italy with over a million and a half printed works, over 300.000 pamphlets, 18.000 manuscripts, 8.000 periodicals, 4.500 incunables, and 1.800 Ercolano papyruses. The library also collects and preserves maps, incisions, photographs and a rich collection of Neapolitan songs, with lyrics and scores published between 1850 and 1960. Moreover, it has electronic resources (database, multimedia products, etc.). Since 2007 the 4Science team has been supporting the library by creating, managing and updating the Digital Library Management System used by the organization. the system is interoperable with the Internet Culturale portal where metadata and digital images are automatically transferred. In 2017 the library migrated its heritage on DSpace-GLAM (https://dl.bnnonline.it/?locale=en).
Bielefeld University is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country’s newer universities, and considers itself a “reform” university, following a different style of organization and teaching than the established universities. In particular, the university aims to “re-establish the unity between research and teaching”, and so all its faculties teach courses in their area of research. The university also stresses a focus on interdisciplinary research, helped by the architecture, which encloses all faculties in one great structure. The university coordinated an OpenAIRE project that was awarded to 4Science: https://www.openaire.eu/blogs/realizing-the-implementation-of-the-openaire-cris-cerif-guidelines-in-dspace-cris-1.
The University of Applied Sciences Burgenland (Fachhochschule Burgenland), with its two campuses in Eisenstadt and Pinkafeld, has been offering its unique degree programmes, with the right mix of theory and practical training, for over 20 years. Today it has got one of the best reputations for success in Austria with more than 8,500 graduates in senior positions, offering a wide range of bachelor and master degree programmes in five areas: Business Studies, Information Technology, Energy and Environment, Health, Social Work. 4Science supports the management and enhancements to the Research Information System, based on DSpace-CRIS, featuring researchers’ profiles, research outputs, organizational units, and projects of the institution, linking all these entities together to provide the best user experience in navigating the repository: https://people.fh-burgenland.at/.
Established in Lisbon in 1290, the University of Coimbra was moved to Coimbra in 1537 and in 2013 it became one of Unesco’s world heritage sites. It is one of the oldest universities in the world and the oldest university in Portugal. The University of Coimbra has over 20.000 students and has one of the biggest communities of international students in Portugal. 4Science was awarded a contract for the creation of the university’s digital library based on DSpace-GLAM to preserve its ancient and precious cultural heritage: https://digitalis-dsp.uc.pt/ and for the migration of the institutional repository to DSpace-CRIS https://estudogeral.sib.uc.pt/.
On June 15, 2020, with over 1,3 million USD financing from the World Bank’s Investment Project: “Improvement and Expansion of the Services of the National System of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation (Sinacyt)”, the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Tecnológica (Concytec), a government organisation under the Presidencia del Consejo de Ministros in Peru, signed with 4Science (for software customization and development) and Semicrol (for documentation and training in Spanish language) the contract for the development of the National Platform #PeruCRIS. The #PeruCRIS Platform is the central component of the #PeruCRIS National Project, which seeks to establish, develop and operate the National Information Network on Science, Technology and Technological Innovation (CTI), in order to consolidate and manage the country’s scientific and academic information, generate statistics to support decision-making at the institutional, regional, sectoral and national levels; as well as to provide global visibility to the activities, capabilities and scientific production of Peruvian researchers.
The #PeruCRIS national platform is based on a highly customized version of DSpace 7 and the CRIS extension, and aligned with international standards and recommendations such as CERIF. It is composed of five directories: human talent, scientific production, projects, institutions and infrastructure; it will provide timely and reliable information services on the actors, activities and capabilities in the field of R&D&I with national coverage; and, the CV of Human Resources, a federated authentication API, a national observatory of STI, access to sources of scientific information and funding opportunities. It will also provide the necessary tools for monitoring and evaluation. More detail available at: https://perucris.concytec.gob.pe/.
This is the largest existing project in the world using DSpace 7 technology, and for an entire national community, which will set an example for other countries. 4Science is proud to be a key player in such an important initiative for developing countries.
The Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe. Its mission is to foster, coordinate, develop and promote scientific and technological research in order to advance knowledge and economic, social and cultural development. Its institutes are spread across all the country, with 15,000+ staff representing 6% of all the staff dedicated to R&D in Spain, generating about 20% of all national scientific production. Based on DSpace-CRIS, DIGITAL.CSIC, https://digital.csic.es/, is the institutional repository of the organization. It collects, manages, preserves and disseminates the research results of CSIC, providing open access to knowledge. It is integrated with the institutional Research Information System with a role in monitoring the research output and in the research evaluation exercise. 4Science provides support for upgrades and customizations.
Inaugurated in 1808, the Conservatorio di Milano (Conservatory of Milan) has since then been one of the most prestigious institutions for the study of music, both nationally and internationally. Today it has almost 1800 students, about 270 teachers, 100 courses of study between I level and II level, from early music to pop-rock, and even masters of I and II level, master classes and seminars with teachers of international renown, scholarships and the Conservatory Prize, a real competition that sees the best students compete annually. The Library has over 500.000 bibliographical units, of these 50.000 are manuscripts, 30.000 are books on music. The library also holds about 400 music periodicals about Italian music in the 1800s and about editorial music production of that same period. In 2007 the Conservatory created the Conservatory’s digital library, which holds 313.000 pictures (7,135 TB) from 3546 documents. Thanks to 4Science this digital heritage is available for consultation on a new DSpace-GLAM application at http://search.bibliotecadigitale.consmilano.it/.
The Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura (CREA) is an important institution in Italy dedicated to agricultural research and agricultural economics analysis. 4Science provides hosting, maintenance and support for their journals on Open Journal Systems (OJS): https://journals-crea.4science.it/.
The Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya (CSUC) is a consortium of research institutions in the region of Catalonia providing services in several areas of activity: scientific computing, communications, electronic administration, repositories and applications, library services, open science, joint procurement, shared services management, training and dissemination, cloud infrastructure. 4Science implemented a portal, based on DSpace-CRIS, to collect research outputs of the >40 Catalan research centers (CERCA), and the integration and synchronization of their data in the Catalan Research portal, also based on DSpace-CRIS: https://portalrecerca.csuc.cat/.
The Consorzio per la Ricerca Sanitaria (CORIS) is dedicated to health research. In 2019 4Science implemented a prototype of their ambitious platform, the “Veneto Health Researchers Platform”, based on DSpace-CRIS, a network for researchers working in the Veneto Region in the field of Human, Environmental and Animal Health. The platform collects information from three databases (PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus) and stores them within the various profiles of researchers, attributing, through the use of ORCID, Scopus and WoS identifiers, to each one their scientific production. Through a complex work of extraction, selection and matching of researchers’ information and their affiliations, a regional database was built. The platform offers the opportunity for collaborations by putting in direct contact regional Researchers and Research Institutions and providing knowledge about the availability and quality of scientific expertise both in terms of content and location. It also provides Researchers in Veneto with a Personal Profile that can be updated and implemented at any time with publications, patents, participation in calls and ongoing projects, and that can also serve as a “showcase” for each professional who can simultaneously show their Curriculum Vitae and the results of their work.
The Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) implemented Ktisis, http://ktisis.cut.ac.cy/, an open access institutional repository and CRIS, gathering digital material related to the various activities of the university, especially original research material produced by its members. Defined in this framework, Ktisis demonstrates the intellectual life and the research activities of the university, preserving, spreading and promoting the scientific research to the local and international community. The repository was named after the symbol of the Cyprus University of Technology depicting Ktisis, the spirit of creation. Based on DSpace-CRIS, supported by 4Science, the CRIS also collects and exposes information about researchers, projects, patents, and theses.
The Durban University of Technology (DUT) is the first choice for higher education in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa. It prioritizes the quality of teaching and learning by ensuring its academic staff possesses the highest possible qualification that they can get. A member of the International Association of Universities, DUT is a multi-campus university of technology at the cutting edge of higher education, technological training and research. The university aspires to be a “preferred university for developing leadership in technology and productive citizenship”. In 2017 4Science upgraded Open Scholar, https://ir.dut.ac.za/, the institutional repository to provide open access to the academic output of the university, to DSpace-CRIS, keeping in place existing configuration and data and adding the configuration of Researcher (with ORCiD) and OrgUnit as separate entities.
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an environment for hosting and processing research data to support EU science and to provide European researchers, innovators, companies and citizens with a federated and open multi-disciplinary environment where they can publish, find and re-use data, tools and services for research, innovation and educational purposes. EOSC DIH is an international cooperation that supports companies in easily accessing the digital technologies and services offered by the EOSC. Aiming to achieve full impact by providing a benefit to the entire research community and supporting Open Access and Open Science policies that are spreading throughout Europe and beyond, 4Science has been engaged to extend two services to DSpace repositories. The Data Correction (based on the OpenAIRE Notification Broker), to enrich repository data by exploiting the vast amount of information made available by OpenAIRE, and the Publication Claim (based on the OpenAIRE Graph), automatically discovering new content produced by the institution’s researchers in the OpenAIRE Graph, thus reducing the manual input from researchers. The ELD ADVANCE project achieves refinement and improvement of the results of the previous OpenAIRE ELD project, targeting a deeper integration between two OpenAIRE services and DSpace, the world’s most widely used repository technology, in its latest and most stable version 7.5 through one final phase.
The integration with the OpenAIRE Notification Broker will be streamlined allowing the repository manager in a single step to retrieve and process the information from the OpenAIRE Notification Broker without the need to use external process to download from here the needed information. The correction service has been generalized so that other providers in future will be able to suggest amendments to existing records to improve the repository data quality.
The ELD ADVANCE solution uses the DSpace REST API as integration layer for all the components, so an important thing is that this technology will be “agnostic” and could be applied not only for DSpace, but also for different repository technologies.
This work is co-funded by the EOSC Future project under the European Union Horizon Programme call INFRAEOSC-03-2020 – Project ID 101017536.
Based in The Hague (The Netherlands), euroCRIS is a not-for-profit international organization that brings together experts on research information in general and research information systems (CRIS and RIMS) in particular. The organization has 300+ members, and a digital repository / Research Information System, http://dspacecris.eurocris.org/, where the record of the numerous research activities (seminars, workshops, meetings, conferences, task groups) are collected, preserved and displayed. It also features the Directory of Research Information Systems (DRIS), a euroCRIS initiative to map the available research information management infrastructure in Europe (and beyond). The repository is implemented with DSpace-CRIS and maintained by 4Science.
The Fraunhofer Society is a major German research organization with 72 institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science. With over 29,000 scientists and engineers and an annual research budget of over €2.8 billion, it is the biggest organization for applied research and development services in Europe. In 2017 4Science was awarded the design and implementation of a DSpace-CRIS solution to manage the research performance indicators for the institutes. Current work by 4Science also includes data analysis and staff training and support. The project was presented at CRIS2018: the 14th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems (Umeå, June 13-16, 2018): https://dspacecris.eurocris.org/handle/11366/644. The system is in production since September 2018.
In 2019, 4Science was awarded another challenging project, a CRIS system to replace the current repository Publica, to collect, manage, preserve, and disseminate the intellectual output of the Fraunhofer’s institutes and the information about the entities that populate the Fraunhofer’s research domain. Together with its stakeholders, the solution was designed and modelled to be integrated and interoperable with all data sources, both external and internal, such as ORCID, bibliographic and bibliometric databases, HR and IDM systems, and more. Publica is based on DSpace-CRIS 7: https://publica.fraunhofer.de/.
Founded in 1734, the University of Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) holds memberships to the U15 Group of major German research universities and to the Coimbra Group of major European research universities. Furthermore, the university maintains strong connections with major research institutes based in Göttingen, such as those of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science and of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community. With approximately 8 million media units, the Göttingen State and University Library ranks among the largest libraries in Germany. 4Science provided support to set up set up and customize the Research Information System based on DSpace-CRIS: https://publications.goettingen-research-online.de/.
Established in 1978, the Hamburg University of Technology prides itself on interdisciplinary research and innovation, with first-class teaching and project-based learning at the heart of the university. 4Science supports the technical management of the Research Information Management System, based on DSpace-CRIS, and provides specialized training and consultancy. The ambitious mission is to represent research activities and outputs at TUHH, including research data: https://tore.tuhh.de/. The Hamburg University of Technology supports DSpace-CRIS participating in the developers’ group, contributing to the roadmap and funding the development of DSpace-CRIS 7.
Hasselt University is a young, dynamic center of expertise for teaching, research, and service provision. In June 2017, the university launched a project to build a new backend module for DSpace to modernize and simplify the submission and the approval workflow. As a result of an international bid, 4Science was selected as the technical implementer of the solution that was built on the ongoing DSpace 7 effort. For the benefit of the whole community, it was agreed that the design and development of these features would happen in the most public and transparent way, sharing as early as possible any decisions or proposals in order to receive valuable feedback from the community: https://wiki.duraspace.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=87467016. The ultimate goal was to exploit this project to develop the related functionalities in DSpace 7, and the new submission and workflow developed by 4Science for DSpace 7 was actually inspired by the Hasselt project. A first demo of the new UI for DSpace 7 developed by 4Science was given at Open Repositories 2018: https://youtu.be/yKnos2jTdSQ.
Health Publishing and Services (HPS) is a leading healthcare publishing and consulting group, a point of reference in the world of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, biotechnology, and all life science-related companies. 4Science hosted and maintained their Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform for some years.
The Helmut Schmidt University, located in Hamburg, Germany, is a German military educational establishment that was founded in 1973 at the initiative of the then-Federal Minister of Defence, Helmut Schmidt. It is one of two universities that were established by the Bundeswehr (Federal Defence) to train and educate its future and existing officers. In general, it is accessible only to officers and officer candidates of the Bundeswehr, hence its original name. However, since it started teaching, there have been cooperation agreements with allied countries, on the basis of which a handful of selected officers from these states have been able to study in Hamburg. Since 2002 there has also been a small number of civilian students at the university. 4Science supported the desing and implementation of the university’s repository and Research Information System, based on DSpace-CRIS: https://openhsu.ub.hsu-hh.de/.
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey (USA), is an independent, postdoctoral research center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry, founded in 1930. The IAS is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein, Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel, after their immigration to the United States. Although it is close to and collaborates with Princeton University, Rutgers University, and other nearby institutions, it is independent and does not charge tuition or fees. 4Science implemented the IIIF Image Viewer to support remote research and enhance the user experience accessing images of the precious ancient inscriptions kept at the Institute: https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/120.
The Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (National Institute of Astrophysicis, INAF) is the most important Italian institution conducting scientific research in astronomy and astrophysics, from the study of the Solar system up to galaxies on cosmological scales. INAF coordinates the activities of twenty research units, including observatories and telescopes. 4Science was awarded a contract to implement the institutional research repository, based on DSpace-CRIS, interoperable with the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant, and the national database for researchers and research outputs operated by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research. The DSpace-CRIS installation of INAF is called OA@INAF: https://openaccess.inaf.it/.
With 1,000+ researchers and 50+ million EUR annual turnover, the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, INGV) is the largest European body dealing with monitoring of geophysical and volcanic phenomena, seismic surveillance, early warning and forecast activities. Since 2004, Earth-prints, http://www.earth-prints.org/, is the institutional and disciplinary repository of INGV that collects, manages, disseminates and preserves datasets, peer-reviewed books and articles, theses, proceedings, web products, for the institutes on the Italian territory and serving the geophysics community abroad, featuring a customization on authors’ affiliation management and display, a tool to integrate the repository with a business intelligence application for reporting and evaluation purposes, and an integration with OJS to publish articles from the Annals of Geophysics, based on OJS and also maintained by 4Science. Now based on DSpace-CRIS, maintained by 4Science, it has been awarded funds from the OpenAIRE initiative “Alternative Funding Mechanism for APC-free Open Access journals and platforms”: https://blogs.openaire.eu/?p=1139.
Jisc (https://www.jisc.ac.uk/) is the UK higher, further education and skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital services and solutions. For UK institutions, Jisc’s Publications Router service works with publishers to capture articles, match them to their authors’ institutions and deliver them directly into the relevant repositories. It is now interoperable with a wider range of systems that institutions use, including research information management systems and CRISs, as well as repositories. Collaboration with 4Science, who developed the relevant patches for the latest DSpace versions, means that Router can now deliver the full richness of RIOXX metadata fields (as well as full-text articles) into recent versions of DSpace. Parallel work includes compliance with the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK, demonstrating the value of institutional repositories for research evaluation as well. Although currently aimed at UK institutions, Jisc would like to enable Router to serve institutions in additional territories. 4Science provides yet another example of a highly complex project, with a key infrastructural enhancement, serving an entire country. Details of the implementation are available here: https://github.com/4Science/rioxxintegration/blob/master/README.md.
Founded in 1971, the University of Kassel is located in Kassel, in the region of Hessen, Germany. It is the leader of “Synergies for Societal Impact in Current Research Information Systems” (SynSICRIS), a 3+2-year project (2017-2022), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) through the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) funding body. The SynSICRIS project develops a way to record and evaluate the contributions and solutions of research and development to social challenges, using agricultural research as an example (https://www.uni-kassel.de/forschung/en/synsicris/). The SynSICRIS project includes design, prototypical realization, prototypical installation, and a pilot site, end-user test, and validation of a software system. The system design, development and implementation were awarded to 4Science as an extension and adaptation of DSpace-CRIS 7. A presentation of the system, from the 2020 euroCRIS series of webinars, is available here: http://hdl.handle.net/11366/1662.
The Kuwait University was inaugurated in 1966 to include the College of Science, the College of Arts, the College of Education and the College for Women. The university is the state’s first public institution of higher education and research, aiming to preserve and transmit knowledge through scholarship, and encourage innovation and development in the arts and the sciences. In 2017 4Science implemented a Digital Library of theses using DSpace and maintained it until 2021 when the university closed the service.
The Casa Generalizia dei Fratelli delle Scuole Cristiane La Salle is part of the La Salle family, made up of more than 3,000 Brothers, who together with the 90,000 educators and lay collaborators assist in more than 1,100 educational works, in 80 countries more than 1 million pupils, including children, young people and adults. The educational centers of the Lasallian Institute include all grades: kindergarten, primary education, middle schools, high schools, non-formal educational centers, vocational training centers and universities. 4Science managed the DSpace repository for publications from 2017 to 2019, when the institution closed the project.
Established in 1977, the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute is one of the most important centers for Buddhism in Europe. It’s an international Buddhist studies and practice school and attracts people from all over the world who are interested in expanding their knowledge of Buddhism. 4Science applied a customized configuration of DSpace-GLAM to manage, preserve and disseminate the institution’s unique and precious cultural heritage: https://www.tesoridisaggezza.org/?locale=en.
Lyrasis is an academic consortium based in the United States, which “catalyzes and enables equitable access to the world’s knowledge and cultural heritage”. Lyrasis host a division for community supported programs including DSpace. DSpace 7.0 is the largest release in the history with over 1 million lines of DSpace code changed. Its development was co-led by 4Science, also thanks to partial community funding collected by Lyrasis. DSpace 7.0 was released on 2nd August 2021.
4Science is closely involved with DSpace as a Certified Platinum Provider and lead contributor to the DSpace community, providing software development & coordination tasks in all Working Groups (Angular UI, REST API – including lead of sub-team, Entities). We also serve the community with three DSpace Committers (the first since 2006), participation in the Leadership and the Steering Groups, and other roles in community initiatives and promotion of DSpace: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+7+Working+Group.
The Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg in the Saxony-Anhalt region of Germany. The university was created in 1817 through the merger of the University of Wittenberg (founded in 1502) and the University of Halle (founded in 1691). 4Science implemented the IIIF Image viewer and enhanced the layout for the DSpace-based repository: https://opendata.uni-halle.de/
The University of Milan is a public teaching and research university. It consists of 9 schools and offers 134 undergraduate and graduate courses, 21 Doctoral Schools and 92 Specialization Schools with over 2.000 professors and a uniquely wide range of disciplinary fields. The University’s research and teaching activities have developed over the years and have received important international recognition. The University of Milan is the only Italian member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), a group of twenty-one research-intensive European universities. It ranks consistently amongst the best universities in Italy both overall and in specific subject areas. In 2017 the university began a pilot project with 4Science that would provide a Research Data Management System for researchers, to collect, share, preserve, and disseminate research datasets. Dataverse was chosen as the preferred platform and after one year it went live: https://dataverse.unimi.it/. With the support of 4Science, the University of Milan also manages the largest Open Journal Systems (OJS) installation in Italy: https://riviste.unimi.it/.
In addition to these university-wide services, also the Department of Contemporary History entrusted 4Science with the creation of a repository based on DSpace-GLAM to support the project “Exiles, community networks, political solidarities between Milan and Europe (1967-1985). Political refugees in the Italian Republic” (“Esuli, reti di comunità, solidarietà politiche tra Milano e l’Europa (1967-1985). I rifugiati politici nell’Italia repubblicana”). This research was funded by the Italian Cariplo Foundation. Through the analysis of unreleased documents, oral sources, testimonies and articles regarding political exiles living in Italy between 1967 and 1985 and the networks they were able to create, researchers aim to investigate this little known aspect of the history of the Italian Republic, and to provide a tool to analyze and understand today’s social dynamics, keeping in mind the differences existing between events in the 70s and 80s and the more recent migration waves: http://versounanuovapatria.unimi.it/
The Nanyang Technological University in Singapore is a research-intensive public university, with 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, with a Medical School and Graduate colleges. One of the top universities in the world, 19th in the QS World University Rankings 2023 and 4th in Asia, NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes – the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering – and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N). 4Science was commissioned to set up the repository and Research Information System of the university, based on DSpace-CRIS with important customizations and integrated with internal systems, working together with the university IT staff. The system is hosted and supported on the cloud infrastructure of 4Science: https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/.
The National Institute of Education (NIE) is an autonomous institute of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, ranked among the top universities in the world by the QS World University Rankings. NIE Digital Repository, https://repository.nie.edu.sg/, aims to organize, preserve and facilitate dissemination of publications and research output. It collects thousands of works, supporting a variety of formats, from books to e-books, journals, reports, visual collections (e.g. photographs), teaching materials, etc., including a vast collection of theses. 4Science provides support, maintenance, and upgrades for the repository, now based on DSpace-CRIS.
Ranked consistently as one of the world’s top universities and the top one in Asia, the National University Singapore (NUS), is the oldest and largest higher education institution in Singapore. Founded in 1905 as a medical college, NUS presently offers the most extensive college degree courses in Singapore. 4Science has been awarded the contract for enhancements, upgrade, and maintenance of ScholarBank@NUS, https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/. Based on DSpace-CRIS, ScholarBank@NUS is the university’s Institutional Repository. Its goals are to collect, preserve, showcase the research output of NUS researchers and departments, including articles, books, patents, and datasets, and to increase the visibility of its researchers, demostrating NUS’ research excellence to the world.
The National Taiwan University is the most prestigious university in Taiwan and one of the top-ranked universities in the world. The University has 11 colleges, with 54 departments and 107 graduate institutes, plus four university-level research centers. The total number of students, including those enrolled at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, has grown to over 33,000, including over 17,000 university students and 15,000 graduate students. The National Taiwan University has produced a number of notable alumni, among whom several presidents of the republic and a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry. 4Science provided expert consultancy to customize the DSpace-CRIS installation for advanced functionalities, to serve the collection, management, re-usage, and dissemination of research information at the institutional level: https://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/.
The Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz – Institut Visuelle Kommunikation (FHNW Academy of Art and Design) is one of Switzerland’s leading universities of applied sciences and arts, actively involved in teaching, research, continuing education and service provision – both innovative and practice-oriented. It offers a broad range of degree programs, hands-on concept and innovative application-oriented research. 4Science provided consultancy for the institutional repository based on DSpace-CRIS.
The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is a department of OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) and is the institution responsible for tolerance and non-discrimination, human rights and the fight against hate crimes in the 57 OSCE participating States. The ODIHR has been appointed as the collection point for information related to tolerance and non-discrimination by participating States in collaboration with the civil society and intergovernmental organizations. TANDIS (Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Information System) is the repository that was developed to share information, to promote good practices and initiatives, and to provide information about tolerance and non-discrimination throughout the OSCE region. 4Science, the winner of an international bid, migrated the TANDIS repository to DSpace-CRIS, implementing advanced features such as customized Solr search and browse and usage statistics: http://tandis.odihr.pl/.
OpenAIRE is a European project formed by 50 partners, from all EU countries, and beyond, who collaborate to work on a large-scale initiative that aims to promote open scholarship and substantially improve the discoverability and reusability of research publications and data. A network of National Open Access Desks (NOADs) organizes activities to collect outputs of EC funded projects, and supports research data management. The project evolved over the years: OpenAIRE-Nexus brings in Europe, EOSC and the world a set of services to implement and accelerate Open Science. To embed in researchers workflows, making it easier for them to accept and uptake Open Science practices of openness and FAIRness. To give the tools to libraries, research communities to make their content more visible and discoverable. To assist policy makers to better understand the environment and ramifications of Open Science into new incentives, scientific reward criteria, impact indicators, so as to increase research and innovation potential. To foster innovation, by providing SMEs with open data about scientific production. To this aim, OpenAIRE-Nexus onboards to the EOSC fourteen services, provided by public institutions, einfrastructures, and companies, structured in three portfolios: PUBLISH, MONITOR and DISCOVER. 4Science was awarded several times by OpenAIRE for prposing and implementing innovative services.
In 2018 4Science received funding for an implementation aimed at increasing the interoperability features supported by the most broadly used platforms in the open science ecosystem for Literature Repositories, Data Repositories, Journals platforms and CRIS/RIMS, such as DSpace, Dataverse, OJS and DSpace-CRIS, namely the Signposting patterns in OJS, the ResourceSync framework in DSpace, the OpenAIRE Guidelines for Data Archives in Dataverse and DSpace-CRIS, the OpenAIRE project API in DSpace-CRIS. Signposting and the ResourceSync framework were selected following the recommendations released by the COAR Next Generation Repositories Working Group. More details here: https://www.openaire.eu/signposting-and-resourcesync-are-now-implemented-in-dspace-dspace-cris-and-ojs, https://www.openaire.eu/openaire-tender-calls-winners.
Supported again by OpenAIRE, in 2019 4Science implemented the most recent version of the OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers in the open source software DSpace-CRIS. The objectives of the project were to realize the implementation of the latest OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers v1.1 in latest DSpace-CRIS version 5 and 6, and to enable DSpace-CRIS platforms to expose research information to OpenAIRE. A pilot was run with the Hamburg University of Technology, the Cyprus University of Technology and the University of Trieste in Europe. More details here: https://www.openaire.eu/blogs/implementation-of-the-openaire-cris-cerif-guidelines-in-dspace-cris.
Competing in the OpenAIRE Call for Innovation, in 2020 4Science received funding form the OpenAIREfor designing, prototyping and implementing the project: OpenAIRE ELD, which released two new services: the Data Correction, to enrich repository data by exploiting the vast amount of information made available by OpenAIRE, and the Publication Claim, to ensure that the repository stays up-to-date by automatically discovering new content produced by the institution’s researchers in the OpenAIRE Graph, thus reducing the manual input from researchers. Both services are available for repositories running on the latest coming DSpace and DSpace-CRIS versions. All information available here: https://www.openaire.eu/openaire-eld-enrich-local-data-via-the-openaire-graph.
Established in 1361, the University of Pavia in Italy is one of the oldest universities in the world. Today, in its two locations: Pavia and Cremona, it offers two faculties, 18 departments, and 85 different undergraduate programs. The University presents itself as a Research University, takes part in international projects and works side by side with the best Colleges in the world. Furthermore, it promotes interdisciplinary research and collaborates with different companies. In 2018 4Science, winner of an international bid, was assigned the task of creating a new Digital Library, based on DSpace-GLAM, which collects all the digital heritage from the Historical Archive, Manuscript Center and Maria Conti Foundation, the University’s Museum System and the University’s libraries: https://www.bibliotecadigitale.unipv.eu/.
PREX is an Italian company in the health sector, market leader in the organization of training courses and marketing projects. Every year it carries out more than 600 training and updating activities for doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals. 4Science hosted and maintained their Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform for some years.
The Prince Sultan University (PSU) was originally founded in 1999 as Prince Sultan Private College. In 2003 the Ministry of Higher Education declared it to be a university. PSU is the first private University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 4Science provided specialized consultancy and support for the PSU Research Hub based on DSpace-CRIS, featuring researchers and organizational units: https://research.psu.edu.sa/.
Members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ Open Repositories Working Group (CARL-ORWG) have a common goal of making research outcomes generated at their universities openly available to the global knowledge commons. In 2018 a subset of CARL-ORWG led by Queen’s University pooled their resources and hired 4Science to develop code to make aggregation from DSpace current versions (5 & 6) into OpenAire possible. In discussions with 4Science it was proposed and decided that this development work include a patch for adding ORCIDs to the required OAI-PMH feed. The new plug-in, developed by 4Science, enables institutions using DSpace 5 & 6 to support OpenAIRE Guidelines for Literature Repositories, Version 4.
Comprehensive, interoperable metadata is an important aspect for discovery and to support other value added services for repositories. As such, several regional repository networks including Europe, Latin America and Canada have agreed to adopt OpenAIRE metadata guidelines in order to align the metadata across their networks and include ORCID for authors’ identification. The adoption of OpenAIRE metadata guidelines is also recommended for repositories that are complying with Plan S.
Given the widespread use of the DSpace platform, this extension will support international interoperability, and enable hundreds of repositories around the world to contribute to network services such as OpenAIRE and LA Referencia.
The complete code for version 5 is available here:
https://github.com/4Science/DSpace/tree/openaire-lit-v4_dspace5
The complete code for version 6 is available here:
https://github.com/4Science/DSpace/tree/openaire-lit-v4_dspace6
Using this code, no extra effort is required other than building and deploying the new version.
The documentation is available at: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/OpenAIRE+Literature+v.4.
Presentations: Open Repositories 2021, slides: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4973626, video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCuoBcpiNso&t=5685s (starting at: 0h 14′ 21″).
Webinar recording: https://vimeo.com/506110161.
Born as a spin-off of the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy, ReviewerCredits is an organization that provides certification for peer review and conference talks. In 2017 4Science built their revolutionary platform, https://www.reviewercredits.com/, which allows the certification of peer-reviews, the evaluation activity of scientific articles based on the voluntary commitment of researchers and scientists. By certifying and encouraging the demanding work of auditors, ReviewerCredits would like to contribute to improving the quality of research and, thanks to a more transparent review process, to avoid cases of scientific fraud. The implementation phase was concluded in 2020.
The University of Siena is one of the oldest and first publicly funded universities in Italy and the world. Originally called Studium Senese, the institution was founded in 1240. Today, it is best known for its Schools of Law, Medicine, and Economics and Management. 4Science implemented a repository for the Department of Biotechnology, Chemistry and Pharmacy (a department of Excellence awarded by the Ministry). The repository, based on DSpace-CRIS, is dedicated to biomolecular research: https://tori.smin.unisi.it/.
The Singapore Polytechnic is an institution of higher learning in Singapore. It is also the first polytechnic established in Singapore. It was founded on 27 October 1954 to provide studies, training, and research in technology, science, commerce, and the arts. As an industry-oriented alternative to a broader-based junior college education, polytechnic graduates in Singapore are sought after for work and many continue to complete university degrees. 4Science maintained and supported the DSpace digital repository system until the project was closed by the institution.
The institutional open archive of the University of Rome 3, ArcAdiA (https://arcadia.sba.uniroma3.it/) aims to collect and provide access to the scientific output of the university and to implement the principles of the Berlin Declaration and the Messina Declaration, signed by the university. It also hold a precious collection of more than 4.000 digital and digitized, published and never released documents amongst which texts, audio recordings, videos and photographs related to the Somali cultural and linguistic heritage, owned by the Center for Somali Studies. The ArcAdiA repository is based on DSpace, maintained by 4Science. 4Science also created an offline digital library based on DSpace that replicates the content of the Somali Archive to allow Somali researches, who do not have access to a broadband connection, to easily access the archives. The offline archive is periodically updated with new records and documents from the online version.
The University of Turin (Torino), in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy, is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an important role in research and training. 4Science implemented a DSpace repository for Italian publishers’ policies, collecting information about open access opportunities from a variety of sources and exposing webservices for integration with other repositories, in the Sherpa Romeo fashion.
Established in 1924, with 23,000 students and 1,000 professors, ranked among the first in Italy by the THE World University Rankings, the University of Trieste is at the center of the Trieste Research System. OpenstarTs, https://www.openstarts.units.it/, the institutional repository of the university, collects, manages, stores and disseminates the digital objects produced by the researchers. The IR is interfaced with the University authentication system (LDAP) and with other institutional databases, such as the student registry. The repository, based on DSpace-CRIS and maintained by 4Science, is presently operational also for the submission of doctoral theses, harvested by the National Library for preservation purposes. It features the add-on modules produced by 4Science: the IIIF Image Viewer, the Document Viewer, the OCR & Transcription, the Video/Audio Streaming, the CKAN Integration
UnityFVG, https://ricerca.unityfvg.it/, is a web gateway for searching and disseminating the research outputs and data generated by the SISSA, University of Trieste and University of Udine, the main academic research institutions in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in the north-east of Italy. The portal is also an open access repository that allows access without restrictions to the results of the activities financed by public funds. 4Science supports the portal based on with DSpace-CRIS, featuring customizations for OpenAIRE and CERIF compliance.