Evolution of Electronic Laboratory Notebooks

Electronic lab notebooks: can they replace paper?

“…ELNs offer significant benefits to researchers by facilitating long-term storage, reproducibility, and enhanced availability of experiment records across multiple devices, ensuring standard operating procedure compliance and providing interfaces to instrumentation, supporting IP protection, collaboration, and open science [ 4 , 21 , 24 , 43 , 49 ]. ELNs eliminate the need for manual transcription and can be used by distributed groups [ 32 ], facilitate managing notes, and simplify the inclusion and curation of digital resources (e.g.…”

GitHub as an open electronic laboratory notebook for real-time sharing of knowledge and collaboration

“…We also believe that GitHub has potential to extend beyond the functionality of an ELN that 'seamlessly integrates the process of data collection, data processing and data publication with minimal overheads for the researcher' as recently envisioned and outlined by Jablonka et al 42 Many discussions of ELNs also envisage an extension of online programs to encompass the broader experimental environment, in so-called ELEs. 43 These may include integration of certain workows into an ELE, so that certain experimental parameters, conditions and results can be automatically updated in and between connected ELNs. 41 Future applications in this space could expand capabilities to include functionalities of specic use for researchers, for example integration of commonly used chemistry programs like molecular structure drawing tools would make it easier to add relevant data to GitHub.…”

Managing research data

“…The papers presented at these sessions discuss many different aspects of the technology and its implementation in research labs. Several recent reviews follow the evolution of the ELN and describe the current types and models available today and the challenges involved in switching from paper to digital Machina and Wild, 2013a;Pearsall, 2013;Rudolphi and Goossen, 2011;Taylor, 2011).…”

“…They include the impact a transition to ELN may have on the scientists, the technical requirements for integration and data management, and the issues related to using third-party suppliers (Pearsall, 2013;Rudolphi and Goossen, 2011;Wright, 2009). Several articles were devoted to problems in implementing ELNs in industry (Elliott, 2013;Machina and Wild, 2013a;Metrick, 2011;Taylor, 2011).…”