Adding research instruments and facilities to the institutional research graph
On Jan 14th, 2026 the Vietsch Foundation announced on their website the awarding of the INST-DSpace project to a group of partners led by euroCRIS. This INST-DSpace partner consortium includes 4Science in Italy and the Technical University of Hamburg (TUHH) in Germany. The main project’s objective is to standardise the inclusion of research instruments and facilities in the open-source DSpace-CRIS software solution for Research Information Management Systems (RIMS/CRIS).
This will be done by expanding the data model underpinning DSpace-CRIS so that the version under development (version 10) includes this additional research entity for equipment. It should be possible for this new entity to be subsequently linked to the already existing ones such as authors, affiliations, projects or research outputs (both research publications and datasets).
This INST-DSpace project webpage summarises the project activity via a series of short posts describing the progress as it happens. These time-stamped posts, with the most recent one at the top, aim to keep the research information management community updated on the project progress. Possible collaborations with other projects working in the same domain will also be highlighted. Finally, this logbook will be used as a source for the reporting to the funder.
The recently announced merger between DSpace and DSpace-CRIS means that this functionality to record instruments and facilities and link them to other entities within the institutional research graph will eventually become available to any institution currently operating a DSpace-based institutional repository.
PROJECT PROGRESS
9 February 2026. INST-DSpace kick-off meeting (online)
The INST-DSpace kick-off meeting had all three project partners in attendance (Pablo de Castro, project coordinator, Jan Dvořák, Dragan Ivanović and Treasurer Peter Leijten on behalf of euroCRIS, Susanna Mornati, Andrea Bollini, Riccardo Fazio, Alessandro Laruffa and Nicole Mariani for 4Science and Oliver Goldschmidt and Gunnar Veidt on behalf of the TUHH) to discuss the project’s financial and technical workflows.
TUHH have already achieved significant progress in the inclusion of their research instruments and facilities in their DSpace-CRIS-based institutional CRIS TORE, as described in Gunnar Veidt’s blogpost. The INST-DSpace objective will be to make it easier for other institutions to replicate this development by having it featured as a specific module in forthcoming versions of DSpace-CRIS. This should allow the linking of instruments to persons, departments/institutes and research outputs like TORE already shows.
As per the project structure, the first steps will address the definition and implementation of the enhanced DSpace-CRIS data model by euroCRIS and 4Science (WP2) and the implementation and testing of the new model for research equipment on the upgraded euroCRIS DSpace-CRIS platform (WP3).
29 January 2026. CERIF surgery on the coding of research equipment and facilities in CERIF
The leads for the CERIF refactoring project Jan Dvořák and Dragan Ivanović, both involved in the INST-DSpace project, have been holding a series of ‘CERIF surgeries’ since Sep 2025 to discuss the needs around the development and implementation of the refactored CERIF with specific euroCRIS members. The fifth one of these surgeries was devoted to the modelling of infrastructure entities within the CERIF Core using their representation in the PIDINST metadata schema as a starting point. This model includes mandatory properties like identifier, schema version, landing page, name, owner, manufacturer, and optional properties such as model description, instrument type, measured variable, and dates.
Together with the structure and persistent identifiers linked to records for instruments, the discussion addressed the need to link research papers and datasets to instruments to track research impact and funding outcomes. This monitoring of the impact of facilities and the translation of research outputs into financial data is often a requirement from funders, see for instance this 2022 report on the socio-economic impact of the Diamond Light Source in the UK.
14 January 2026. Project announcement on LinkedIn
On the same day the INST-DSpace project is announced on LinkedIn (with a link to the Vietsch Foundation project webpage), another LinkedIn post announces the concession by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of a similarly scoped project to the TIB Hannover. These two parallel projects – INST-DSpace at euroCRIS and "Scientific Instruments Metadata Mapping" one at the TIB – together with the Masaryk Uni Brno-led RIFF European project, suggest a momentum towards the examination of research instruments and facilities as a suitable addition to the current research graph.