关于DSpace全新安装默认元数据设置中是否包含Software条目的技术咨询

Great question—this is a common point of confusion when working with DSpace's default metadata structures, so let’s break this down clearly:

• Default DSpace behavior: A fresh, out-of-the-box installation of DSpace (across all recent stable versions, including 6.x and 7.x) does not include "Software" as a pre-configured option in the controlled "Type" metadata field. The default controlled vocabulary for Type typically includes standard academic item types like Article, Book, Thesis, Conference Paper, and Dataset—but Software is absent from this default set.

• What the 40% of servers represent: Those institutions manually added the "Software" Type to their controlled metadata vocabulary. This can be done in a few ways, depending on the DSpace version:

  • For DSpace 7+, admins can use the web-based administrative interface to edit the controlled vocabulary for the dc.type field and add "Software" as a new allowed value.
  • For older versions (6.x and below), admins might edit configuration files (like dspace.cfg or vocabulary XML files) or directly update the relevant database tables to insert the new Type value.
  • Some may also use community-contributed modules or extensions built specifically for academic software archiving, which include this Type by default—but these are not part of the core DSpace installation.

• What the 60% of servers represent: These institutions haven’t modified the default controlled vocabulary for Type. They didn’t "remove" Software (since it wasn’t there to begin with)—they simply kept the out-of-the-box configuration provided by DSpace.

It’s understandable you didn’t find this in the Confluence Wiki; this specific detail is often buried in the Admin Guide’s sections on configuring controlled vocabularies, rather than highlighted in the main documentation.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者domhnallc