#LAB NOTEBOOK SOFTWARE#
The learning curves posed by integrating new software into researcher workflows create additional barriers to widespread ELN adoption. Communicating the importance of the institutional security review and its function to protect research data and information long term-for both researchers and the institution-is crucial, as is ensuring that the security review process itself is well documented and timely in its completion.
#LAB NOTEBOOK FREE#
This step is easily overlooked when individual research labs or groups purchase licenses for ELN use outside of institutional units (e.g., Procurement Office) or use the free version of an ELN for academic research.
This highlights the importance of auditing an ELN product to ensure that third party companies' data practices are compliant with university standards. This emphasis on data security, which includes guidance on entering, storing, and retaining data with third parties, can further complicate ELN adoption since these products often process and store data in the cloud.
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This is particularly notable for providing additional data security measures important to protect research information, as well as enable retention of this information and data by academic institutions.ĭue to research universities' growing concerns over institutional cybersecurity and protecting data assets, universities increasingly require their researchers to ensure the security of their research data. Additionally, features like institutional single sign-on and integration with an institution's cloud storage subscriptions (e.g., Google Drive, Box, Microsoft OneDrive) are often only available with institutional licensing. While many ELN products offer a “freemium” model whereby a given number of people or a given amount of storage is free, the limitations of the free versions rarely meet the needs of researchers over time. For some, this is a possibility via research funds however, most find themselves unable or unwilling to cover such a cost.
#LAB NOTEBOOK LICENSE#
One primary challenge is cost unless these tools are licensed by their home institutions, research labs or groups find themselves shouldering the cost of a license for these products. ĭespite these purported advantages, numerous barriers may discourage researchers from transitioning from paper notebooks to ELNs. Lastly, ELNs may promote research reproducibility by providing improved documentation of research processes, particularly through features such as versioning and revision tracking. Additionally, ELNs can ingest and store large(r) amounts of data, with many also offering integrated options for data backup and data security. Within university settings, electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) are marketed as an improvement to paper notebooks, including improved information retrieval and data sharing.
Research institutions are currently facing a variety of information and data management challenges, such as increasing amounts of data regenerated, need for data storage, replicability and reproducibility, funder mandates for data sharing, and research misconduct.
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