Type metadata default settings

Question

I'm researching the prevalence of research software as entries in institutional repositories. I've found from querying UK Dspace servers that around 40% had 'software' as a type (eg, setName: 'Type = Software' and setSpec: 74797065733D736F667477617265 ) within the controlled metadata available, and 60% didn't.

This leads me to the question as to whether this is enabled by default from a fresh installation, or has to be added by the repo maintainers. That is, have the 60% made a conscious choice to remove software as a type of entry, or have the 40% made a decision to explicitly add it. I've checked through the confluence wiki and can't seem to find an answer! Thanks

Answer 1

In dspace "Type" has no default values. It can contain any text. But it usually is transformed to a closed vocabulary, depending on the nature of the repository. setSpec is not used.

Answer 2

In stock DSpace, the submission forms configuration includes "Software" in the 'value-pairs' lists named 'common_types' and (in DSpace v7) 'openaire_types'. The 'common_types' list is used to provide the dropdown-list for the field "Type" and the user's choice is stored in metadata as 'dc.type'. It is fairly easy to remove (or add) choices in these lists, or to change the field from a drop-list to a plain text field.

(I found this by examining the configuration file. Many of DSpace's configuration files have extensive commentary and are treated as primary documentation for those aspects of the product.)

So, "Software" is an available type by defaut, and it is quite plausible that some sites have removed it.

It is also possible that, at many of the sites you've sampled, editors have removed or replaced "Software" in individual submissions during the submission workflow (if one is enabled). Your best approach might be to ask interesting sites about their submission process and metadata policies.