An open-source extension of the DSpace repository platform, developed by 4Science and the DSpace community, that adds CRIS-style entity management for researchers, projects, organisational units, journals, and other research-information entities alongside the existing repository content.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
An Italian university running DSpace-CRIS as its combined repository and CRIS, publishing researcher profile pages.
Is an instance
A Latin American national research aggregator built on DSpace-CRIS instances harvested by OpenAIRE.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A vanilla DSpace deployment is not DSpace-CRIS unless the CRIS module is installed.
Not an instance
Pure or Elements are not DSpace-CRIS — they are separate commercial CRIS products.

Editorial commentary

DSpace-CRIS extends DSpace’s data model so that, in addition to items (repository content), the system manages people, projects, and organisations as first-class entities with their own metadata schemas, displays, and relationships. This lets a single platform act as both institutional repository and CRIS, with researcher profile pages that aggregate the researcher’s deposited works, projects, and CV details. DSpace-CRIS is widely deployed at universities in southern Europe and Latin America and integrates with ORCID, CERIF, OpenAIRE, and OAI-PMH.

References

Bollini A. et al., 'DSpace-CRIS: A CRIS Module within DSpace' (CRIS conference proceedings). 4Science, 'DSpace-CRIS' (4science.com/dspace-cris).

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="DSpace-CRIS"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dspace-cris" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dspace-cris",
  "name": "DSpace-CRIS",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dspace-cris",
  "description": "An open-source extension of the DSpace repository platform, developed by 4Science and the DSpace community, that adds CRIS-style entity management for researchers, projects, organisational units, journals, and other research-information entities alongside the existing repository content.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dspace-cris",
  "sameAs": [],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:20",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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