Introducing Djehuty, 4TU.ResearchData’s open source repository software

We are delighted to announce the launch of our in-house developed free and open source repository software, called Djehuty. With this launch, 4TU.ResearchData is proud to move to a free and open-source software, in support of our open science efforts and overall vision.

Why Djehuty?

Over the last years, 4TU.ResearchData has seen an active community of researchers and support staff around its data repository. We are always listening to the feedback and improvement suggestions from our community and so, the time had come to further shape the technical development of 4TU.ResearchData and work towards sustainable infrastructures together. 

By joining our efforts and co-developing solutions together, we are not only responding to changing community needs but also supporting Open Science in general. Taking the strategic decision to move to a free and open source software proved to be the best way forward. 

As we move on, we want to express our gratitude to the functionalities offered by our previous repository – figshare – as well as all the support received from their teams. 

We are now going into production with Djehuty, a name taken after an Egyptian god who invented writing. The code has been open source since June 30, 2022: https://github.com/4TUResearchData/djehuty  

What’s new?

Although the main functionalities have not changed substantially, there are a few updates worth sharing with you: 

• A dashboard page is created for each registered user. This is your personal page where you can access your draft and published datasets/collections and add new ones. The dashboard page will be further expanded in the future, so please let us know if you want something included.
• Connecting with Git: if you upload software files, and select Software deposit in the ‘Files’ section of the upload form, there is the option to do this directly from your Git repo. This capability is open to any type of Git repo and is not limited to GitHub or GitLab only. Please note that if you previously applied the auto-sync setting that automatically generates a new version of your dataset in 4TU.ResearchData with a new release in your Git repo, this  will no longer work. Depending on the needs of the community, we will further investigate how to optimise the Git integration.
• API: the API is backward compatible to ensure you can work the same way with this API as you did before with the figshare API. All you need to do is create a new API token.
• Data model: Now that we have moved to open source repository software not only means that the codebase is completely open to let everyone know how our repository works, but also that we have implemented open standards and an open data model.  Our data model is based on RDF (Resource Description Framework), a semantic web standard used to describe and model information for web resources. RDF represents information in graphs, making it easier to capture and query data, and supports us to create interoperable data and systems.

Marta Teperek, Director of 4TU.ResearchData, says about the release: “I am extremely proud to oversee the strategic investment in free and open source software. This will enable our community to shape our future developments and drive innovation in 4TU.ResearchData. This is an essential step to put Open Science principles into practice and facilitate digital sovereignty.” 

We would like to thank everyone involved in the development of Djehuty, from our technical team, to community managers and members, the 4TU.ResearchData Board, colleagues from partner institutions, non-technical staff and many more… We could not have done it without this wonderful team effort!

More information:

You can read our blog article (s) to find out more about Djehuty: We are going free and open-source.