The Strategic Goals of the Dataverse Project are our highest-level guide.  These goals are to:

  • increase adoption (users, dataverses, datasets, installations, journals
  • develop capability to handle sensitive, large scale, and streaming data
  • expand data and metadata features for existing and new disciplines
  • expand archival and preservation features
  • increase interoperability through implementation of standards
  • increase contributions from the open-source development community
  • improve UX and UI
  • continue to increase the quality of the software

Throughout the year, we'll identify big steps that we can take to focus on one or more of these goals. These big steps are represented on our Roadmap below. Ideas that we haven't yet prioritized yet are in the Future column. We want to do these things, but we haven't yet prioritized them. In the Planning/Design column, you can see those strategic items that we've prioritized and are designing and testing with the community. Once we've decided on the solution that we'll build, we'll start Implementation and soon release new features and functionality to our community. A list of Recent Releases is available at the bottom of the page. 

If you'd like to see everything that the Dataverse Team and Community are working on right now, check out the Project Board on Github.

Implementation

  • Q3 2019 Make Data Count Integration - Work Completed August 9th, to be included in version 4.16
    • Integration with the Make Data Count project will provide standardized reporting for views and downloads of research data in Dataverse, and researchers will also be able to get more information about their research's impact through the display of citations in Dataverse. Additional Information is available from makedatacount.org
    • Github Issue #4821 (back end code), #5253 (front end code)
  • Q4 2019 Updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
    • The Harvard Dataverse will review and update the privacy policy and the terms of use. 
  • Q4 2019 Dataset Level Explore Tools
    • Building on earlier efforts of building Exploration Tools at the file level, Dataset level exploration will allow researchers to access tools that work across multiple or all files within a dataset. This infrastructure is being added through support by The Sloan Foundation and will initally support an integration with Code Ocean, but the feature is being implemented in a way that makes it easier for other developers to build exploration, visualization, and computation tools.  
    • Github Issue #5028
    • Check out the Code in Progress
  • Q4 2019 Homepage Visualization
    • The IQSS Dataverse team is working with the Harvard Library to create a homepage visualization that shows the growth of a dataverse installation and the activity and connections between the datasets. This will be made open source for the community to use and edit.
    • Github Issue #5603
  • Q2 2020 Trusted Remote Storage Agent (TRSA) Integration for Sensitive and Large Data
    • TRSAs allow data providers to create metadata records in Dataverse for research data that is too large or sensitive to deposit into Dataverse. Researchers can discover the metadata in Dataverse and be directed to the appropriate steps or automated workflows to access the data itself. Additional Information is available from cyberimpact.us.
    • Github Issue #5213
    • Check out the Code in Progress
  •  

Planning/Design

  • Q4 2019 Redesigned, Scalable Dataset and File Pages
    • As we add additional features to Dataverse we're finding that we need to revisit our Dataset and File pages. We're working on a more modular, scalable, accessible, and responsive experience that will be informed by present use cases and future use cases.  
    • Mockups
    • Github Issue #3404
  • Q4 2019 Simplified Linking and Dataverse Creation Workflows
    • By making it easier to create dataverses and link datasets, researchers can more easily create and curate custom collections of data.
    • Github Issue #5874#5890
  • Q2 2020 Green, Blue, Yellow DataTags Support
    • Through an integration with Datatags, researchers will be able to deposit and share datasets that contain sensitive information up to the Yellow level.  
    • Github Issue #871 
  • Q1 2020 Code Deposit and Expanded Software Metadata, Sync from Github
    • Code can currently be deposited into Dataverse, but we'll provide some code-specific metadata, an updated workflow, and a way to automatically sync Github respositories into Dataverse as researchers commit code.
    • Github Issue #2739#5372

Future

  • Q3 2020 Capsulation and Packaging for Replication Objects
  • Orange DataTags Support
    • Through an integration with Datatags, researchers will be able to deposit and share datasets that contain sensitive information up to the Orange level.   
      • Github Issue #871
  • Embargo
    • Authors will be able to create dataset metadata in Dataverse and set up a timed-release process for the data itself.  
  • Citations for Dataverses
    • Researchers will be able to cite Dataverses as well as Datasets and Files

Recent Releases

  • 4.15.1  Performance Enhancements, Variable Metadata Edit APIs 7/10/2019
  • 4.15 Sorting and Filtering Files in a Dataset, Better Recognition and Categorization of Files 6/14/2019
  • 4.14 OpenAIRE-compliant exports, expanded analytics options 5/10/2019
  • 4.13 File Hierarchy Support, File Metadata Edit APIs 4/22/2019 

Last updated 8/9/2019