Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs)
What are ELNs?
ELNs enable structured, easily searchable and reusable digital documentation of projects, experiments and the research data collected therein, including the metadata required for their reuse. This makes them an important cornerstone of good scientific practice and ensures that they comply with the FAIR principles for research data.
Depending on the programme architecture, ELNs are (fully) searchable and enable collaboration between working groups and institutes through role and rights management. API-based interfaces also enable connection to other management systems (e.g. laboratory equipment management), to specific measuring devices for reading data, or to repositories for archiving and reusing research data.
Which ELN is available at HU?
A test instance of the ELN eLabFTW, a laboratory notebook without a specific disciplinary focus, is currently set up on the HU Cloud. It is therefore suitable for documenting projects, experiments and research data in a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to a well-developed role and rights management system, collaboration across working groups is also possible.
Tutorials and support
Video collection from ORCA.NRW
Material collection from the University of Münster
Documentation from eLabFTW
Room in Elements to exchange among team admins
Note
Please note: eLabFTW currently only exists as a test instance at HU. The instructions in the FAQ to contact the ELN team are therefore only valid for the pilot laboratories within the CARDS project until further notice.
Contact
FAQ (*)
Why should I use an electronic lab book?
The use of an ELN facilitates the precise documentation of experiments. It enables, for example, easy collaboration with colleagues, uniform laboratory documentation based on standardised templates (e.g., through the use of discipline-specific metadata standards or freely available discipline-specific templates) and improved data security.
Can every discipline use an ELN?
The ELN elabFTW is a generic laboratory notebook and is therefore suitable for any discipline. The developer, Deltablot, always strives to implement specific user requests. Since elabFTW is an open-source product, independent adjustments by the operator of the instance are also possible. Requests can be sent directly to elabftw.cms@hu-berlin.de.
The system can also be used by disciplines that do not traditionally use laboratory notebooks in their daily work. Please contact elabftw.cms@hu-berlin.de to discuss solutions for your specific needs with the team.
How do I get access?
Currently, access is only possible as part of the CARDS pilot project, as only a test instance has been set up for the duration of the pilot phase to test the possibilities of permanent operation.
If you would like to familiarise yourself with eLabFTW, we recommend trying out the publicly available demo version of eLabFTW.
Or you can request access from NFDI4Chem. Here you can also test aspects of role and rights management up to the team admin level.
Is my research work secure in eLabFTW?
Yes, eLabFTW offers data backup and recovery features to ensure that your valuable data is protected. In addition, the software is run on servers at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, which ensures data protection and regular backups.
The service is currently only available as a test instance. Continuous operation of eLabFTW beyond 2026 is planned but has not yet been decided.
Can I share my lab book data with other researchers?
You can easily share your own data sets in eLabFTW, e.g. with members of your own team. eLabFTW also offers various export options so that you can easily share your data and notes with other researchers and ELNs. Possible export formats include PDF, ZIP, CSV, JSON and the newly developed ELN format.
What is an eLabFTW team?
In eLabFTW, the term ‘team’ refers to an organisational unit (working group, research group, joint project, SFBs, Transregios). Users can be members of several teams at the same time and can easily switch between teams. Switching between teams is possible upon request: elabftw.cms@hu-berlin.de.
In eLabFTW, team administrators also have the option of creating subgroups within their teams to structure the internal organisation more precisely.
How can I request my own team?
As the head of an organisational unit (see Terms of Use), you can get your own team in eLabFTW. If you would like to do so, please fill out the ‘Team Request’ form and send it to us by email.
If a team member leaves the university, what happens to their experiments in eLabFTW?
As a general rule, no experiments are lost or deleted in eLabFTW. However, depending on the read and write permissions a member has assigned to their experiments, it is possible that a team member's experiments will no longer be visible to the rest of the team after they leave. To prevent this, we recommend configuring eLabFTW at the team level so that team administrators always have read and, if necessary, write access to all of the team's experiments. This ensures that a team member's experiments can still be viewed even if the person leaves the team or the university.
* Kindly provided by the Research Data Management Team at the University of Münster. Link.