diff --git a/.github/workflows/main.yml b/.github/workflows/main.yml
index e9744c9..5c6507d 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/main.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/main.yml
@@ -20,3 +20,23 @@ jobs:
   test:
     uses: ./.github/workflows/test.yml
     secrets: inherit
+  release:
+    # disables this workflow from running in a repository that is not part of the indicated organization/user
+    if: github.repository_owner == 'afuetterer'
+    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
+    needs:
+    - lint
+    - test
+    steps:
+    - uses: actions/checkout@b4ffde65f46336ab88eb53be808477a3936bae11 # v4.1.1
+      with:
+        fetch-depth: 0 # get all commits and tags
+        token: ${{ secrets.SEMANTIC_RELEASE_TOKEN }}
+    - name: Create semantic release
+      uses: python-semantic-release/python-semantic-release@d38d71ef2ae2b3c34066557ddb822385c1730c7f # v8.3.0
+      with:
+        # allows for python-semantic-release to push to protected main branch
+        github_token: ${{ secrets.SEMANTIC_RELEASE_TOKEN }}
+        git_committer_name: github-actions[bot]
+        git_committer_email: 41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com
+        root_options: -vv --noop
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index c474e3c..1a6ff34 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -100,15 +100,13 @@ python -c "import json;print(json.load(open('coverage.json'))['totals']['percent
 """
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.lint]
-features = [
-  "lint",
-]
+features = [ "lint"]
 [tool.hatch.envs.lint.scripts]
 style = "SKIP=mypy pre-commit run --all-files --color=always"
 typing = "pre-commit run --all-files --color=always mypy"
 all = [
   "style",
-  # "typing",
+  "typing",
 ]
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.docs]
@@ -213,6 +211,23 @@ show_error_context = true
 using = "PEP631"
 format = "ansi"
 
+# python-semantic-release
+# Ref: https://python-semantic-release.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuration.html#settings
+# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[tool.semantic_release]
+commit_message = "chore: release {version}\n\nAutomatically generated by python-semantic-release [skip ci]"
+logging_use_named_masks = true
+major_on_zero = false
+tag_format = "{version}"
+version_variables = [
+  "src/oaipmh_scythe/__about__.py:__version__",
+]
+build_command = """
+python -m pip install build
+python -m build
+"""
+
 # typos
 # Ref: https://github.com/crate-ci/typos/blob/master/docs/reference.md
 # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/templates/.changelog.md b/templates/.changelog.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68137f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/.changelog.md
@@ -0,0 +1,119 @@
+## [0.8.0](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.7.0...0.8.0) (2023-11-16)
+
+Note: Rename project to oaipmh-scythe when forking it from [mloesch/sickle](https://github.com/mloesch/sickle) to
+[afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe)
+
+### Breaking Changes
+
+- drop support for Python 2
+- drop support for EOL Python 3.7 and below
+- rename Sickle class to Scythe to reflect the change of the project name
+- switch to PEP8 compliant names for methods (ListRecords() -> list_records())
+- remove .next() method from iterator classes
+
+### Features
+
+- set up default custom user agent (oaipmh-scythe/{version})
+
+### Performance Improvements
+
+- make iterator classes yield their responses
+
+### Code Refactoring
+
+- switch from requests to httpx
+- make BaseOAIIterator an ABC
+- move version information to __about__.py
+- add a custom base exception
+
+### Testing
+
+- switch from nose to pytest
+- add tests for Python 3.8 - 3.12 in CI
+- use canned responses from Zenodo to test harvesting logic (vcr.py)
+
+### Documentation
+
+- update license text
+- update authors and contributors
+- update copyright notice in src files
+- add contributor guide
+- add security policy
+- add issue and pull request templates
+- add custom GitHub labels
+- switch from Sphinx to mkdocs-material
+- switch from Read the Docs to GitHub pages
+- switch from reStructuredText to Markdown
+- switch to Zenodo for harvesting examples
+- update README badges
+
+### Other
+
+- switch from Travis CI to Github actions for CI
+- add scheduled dependency updates with Dependabot
+- add pre-commit hooks (e.g. ruff, mypy)
+- switch to src layout
+- switch from setup.py to pyproject.toml
+- switch to hatch for project setup
+- add type annotations
+- switch to Google style docstrings
+- rename first tags of sickle project for consistency (e.g. v0.5 -> 0.5.0)
+- enable CodeQL scanning
+- add OpenSSF Scorecard report
+
+## [0.7.0](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.6.5...0.7.0) (2020-05-17)
+
+- method for record metadata extraction has been extracted (`Record.get_metadata()`) to make subclassing easier ([mloesch/sickle#38](https://github.com/mloesch/sickle/pull/38))
+- retryable HTTP status codes and default wait time between retries can be customized ([mloesch/sickle#21](https://github.com/mloesch/sickle/issues/21) [mloesch/sickle#41](https://github.com/mloesch/sickle/pull/41))
+- retry logic has been fixed: `max_retries` parameter now refers to no. of retries, not counting the initial request anymore
+- the default number of HTTP retries has been set to 0 (= no retries)
+- fix for [mloesch/sickle#39](https://github.com/mloesch/sickle/pull/39)
+
+## [0.6.5](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.6.4...0.6.5) (2020-01-12)
+
+- fix: repr methods where causing an exception on Python 3 ([mloesch/sickle#30](https://github.com/mloesch/sickle/issues/30))
+
+## [0.6.4](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.6.3...0.6.4) (2018-10-02)
+
+- fix: resumption token with empty body indicates last response ([mloesch/sickle#25](https://github.com/mloesch/sickle/issues/25))
+
+## [0.6.3](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.6.2...0.6.3) (2018-04-08)
+
+- fix unicode problems (issues 20 & 22)
+
+## [0.6.2](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.6.1...0.6.2) (2017-08-11)
+
+- missing datestamp and identifier elements in record header don\'t break harvesting
+- lxml resolve_entities disabled (<http://lxml.de/FAQ.html#how-do-i-use-lxml-safely-as-a-web-service-endpoint>)
+
+## [0.6.1](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.5.0...0.6.1) (2016-11-13)
+
+- it is now possible to pass any keyword arguments to requests
+- the encoding used to decode the server response can be overridden
+
+## [0.5.0](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.4.0...0.5.0) (2015-11-12)
+
+- support for Python 3
+- consider resumption tokens with empty tag bodies
+
+## [0.4.0](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.3.0...0.4.0) (2015-05-31)
+
+- bug fix: resumptionToken parameter is exclusive
+- added support for harvesting complete OAI-XML responses
+
+## [0.3.0](https://github.com/afuetterer/oaipmh-scythe/compare/0.2.0...0.3.0) (2013-04-17)
+
+- added support for protected OAI interfaces (basic authentication)
+- made class mapping for OAI elements configurable
+- added options for HTTP timeout and max retries
+- added handling of HTTP 503 responses
+
+## 0.2.0 (2013-02-26)
+
+- OAI items are now represented as their own classes instead of XML elements
+- library raises OAI-specific exceptions
+- made lxml a required dependency
+
+## 0.1.0 (2013-02-20)
+
+First public release.
diff --git a/templates/.changes.j2 b/templates/.changes.j2
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9bcd6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/.changes.j2
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+{%- set commit_type_heading_mapping = (
+  ("breaking", "BREAKING CHANGES"),
+  ("feature", "Features"),
+  ("fix", "Bug Fixes"),
+  ("performance", "Performance improvements"),
+  ("refactor", "Code Refactoring"),
+  ("test", "Testing"),
+  ("documentation", "Documentation"),
+) -%}
+
+{% for commit_type, heading in commit_type_heading_mapping if commit_type in release["elements"] %}
+### {{ heading }}
+
+{% for commit in release["elements"][commit_type] -%}
+- {% if commit.scope %}**{{ commit.scope }}:** {% endif %}{{ commit.descriptions[0] }} ([`{{ commit.short_hash }}`]({{ commit.hexsha|commit_hash_url }}))
+{% endfor %}{% endfor %}
diff --git a/templates/.release_notes.md.j2 b/templates/.release_notes.md.j2
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53f4f87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/.release_notes.md.j2
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{% include ".changes.j2" %}
diff --git a/templates/CHANGELOG.md.j2 b/templates/CHANGELOG.md.j2
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d30246
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/CHANGELOG.md.j2
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+# Changelog
+
+All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
+
+This project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html). See
+[conventional commits](https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/) for commit guidelines.
+{% macro version_compare_url(prev_version, version) -%}
+https://github.com/{{ context.repo_owner }}/{{ context.repo_name }}/compare/{{ prev_version }}...{{ version }}
+{%- endmacro %}
+
+{# UNRELEASED -#}
+{% set last_release = context.history.released.items() | first | first -%}
+{% set unreleased = version_compare_url(last_release.as_tag(), "main") -%}
+## [Unreleased]({{ unreleased }})
+
+{# RELEASED #}
+{% for version, release in context.history.released.items() if "unknown" not in release["elements"] or release["elements"]|length > 1 -%}
+{% if version.as_tag() > "0.8.0" -%}{# Generate changelog entries for releases > 0.8.0 #}
+{%- set prev_version = loop.nextitem[0] -%}
+{%- set compare_url = version_compare_url(prev_version, version) -%}
+## [{{ version.as_tag() }}]({{ compare_url }}) ({{ release.tagged_date.strftime("%Y-%m-%d") }})
+{% include ".changes.j2" %}
+{% endif -%}
+{% endfor -%}
+{% include ".changelog.md" %}{# insert manually curated changelog of sickle project -#}