Records

What is a Record?

In InvenioRDM, a record is a published digital artefact described with metadata and optionally including files. Records in your instance could contain PDFs, datasets, blog posts or anything else. The landing page, the publicly accessible view of the record, displays:

• All relevant metadata information.
• A list of files with integrated previews.
• Other valuable details like statistics, versions, or communities.

Create a Record

You can deposit new records into InvenioRDM by using the upload form. To begin, click the "New upload" button or link.

This action will open the deposit form page, where you can:

• Choose a community (if any) for submission
• Select the files you wish to upload.
• Fill in the necessary metadata information about your record.
• Define access restrictions to control who can view and access your content.

Once you save your record as a draft for the first time, you gain access to additional features. You can then preview how your record will appear on its landing page by using the Preview button, and you can also share it with colleagues for feedback or collaboration before final publication.

Metadata-only records

A metadata-only record is a record that contains only descriptive metadata, and no associated files. These types of records can be useful in cases where the resource does not have a corresponding digital object or its files are hosted elsewhere.

The site administrator can choose to enable or disable the creation of metadata-only records. For more on that, see this section.

To mark a record as metadata-only, simply select the "Metadata-only record" checkbox when creating a new record:

Restrict records

A record can be marked as restricted in order to restrict its access to specific users. This is useful for example to share a record with a colleague or team before making it public.

When creating or editing a record, click the "Restricted" checkbox under "Full record" in the "Visibility" section of the form to make the entire record -metadata and files- restricted:

To only make the files restricted, click the "Restricted" checkbox under "Files only" in the "Visibility" section.

Submit to a community

When you are uploading a new record, you have the option to select a community for submission. If you choose a community, the "Publish" button will automatically change to "Submit for review."

When you submit a new draft record to a community, InvenioRDM automatically creates a new review request. This allows the community members to review your submission and decide whether to accept it into their community.

Until the review request is accepted, your draft record remains private. It will only be visible to you (the uploader) and the members of that specific community.

Inclusion in communities

Introduced in v12

A record can be included in multiple communities. To manage which communities your record is included in, navigate to the "Communities" menu on the record's landing page.

From there, use the "Submit to community" option to select additional communities where you would like your record to be added.

Request access to restricted files

Introduced in v12

You can allow authenticated and non-authenticated (guest) users to request access to view the restricted files of a public record. Access can be set to expire on a specific date as well as never expire. Depending on your instance, access can be optionally temporary or not.

Note: accepted access requests grant to the requester access to all versions of the record.

Enable access requests

As a record owner, you first need to allow accessing restricted files via a request:

1. Create a record with restricted files

2. Click on the "Share" button on the record landing page:

3. Navigate to the "Settings" tab of the modal:

4. Change the settings for the access requests:

   • Allow authenticated or/and unauthenticated users to request access to restricted files of your record.
   • Accept conditions. Provide a message that will be visible to the users in the request form (see screenshot below)
   • Set access expiration date. This setting will be applied by default to all access requests. When reviewing an access request, you can set a different value.

5. Save your changes

Now both authenticated and anonymous users are able to request view access to your record’s files. You need to approve their request to grant them access to your record's files.

Request access to restricted files

As a user that would like to get access to restricted files of a record, it is necessary to fill in the request form appearing in the record landing page. This action creates and submits a new access request: the record's owner will be notified, and the request will appear on their respective dashboards. If the requester has changed their mind they can cancel the request from their dashboard.

Accepting/Declining the request

The submitter and the record's owner can find the newly created access request in "My dashboard" -> "Requests", and can exchange comments. The record's owner can define a new expiration date (changing the default settings) for this access request, accept or decline it:

After accepting the request, the requester will receive a notification by e-mail and will be able to access the restricted files:

Export in different formats

Introduced in v12

InvenioRDM provides various record serialization formats to let users easily export bibliographic records in a machine-readable way (to transfer them to different systems for instance). These formats adhere to widely used metadata standards such as DataCite, Dublin Core, BibTeX, ...

By providing a range of export formats, InvenioRDM empowers users to share and exchange metadata records with other systems in a format that is compatible with their respective standards. This makes it easier to ensure that metadata records are accurate, complete, and consistent across different systems.

A bibliographic record can be exported to a different format via the user interface (UI) or via the application programming interface (API):

Via the UI

On the record landing page, use the Export dropdown menu ...

... and select the format you wish to export the record's metadata into.

Via the API

Use the Accept header:

GET /api/records/ HTTP/1.1
Host: inveniordm.web.cern.ch
Accept: <export-format-mime-type>;charset=UTF-8

Find below the Accept header MIME type for each export format.

Format	MIME Type
JSON	application/json
Datacite XML	application/vnd.datacite.datacite+xml
Datacite JSON	application/vnd.datacite.datacite+json
DCAT-AP	application/dcat+xml
Citation Style Language	application/vnd.citationstyles.csl+json
MARCXML	application/marcxml+xml
BibTex	application/x-bibtex
Dublin Core	application/x-dc+xml
GeoJSON	application/vnd.geojson+json