Electronic lab notebook

An electronic lab notebook (also known as electronic laboratory notebook, or ELN) is a computer program designed to replace paper laboratory notebooks. Lab notebooks in general are used by scientists, engineers, and technicians to document research, experiments, and procedures performed in a laboratory. A lab notebook is often maintained to be a legal document and may be used in a court of law as evidence. Similar to an inventor's notebook, the lab notebook is also often referred to in patent prosecution and intellectual property litigation.

Electronic lab notebooks offer many benefits to the user as well as organizations; they are easier to search upon, simplify data copying and backups, and support collaboration amongst many users.[1] ELNs can have fine-grained access controls, and can be more secure than their paper counterparts.[2] They also allow the direct incorporation of data from instruments, replacing the practice of printing out data to be stapled into a paper notebook.[3]

  1. ^ Myers, James; Elena Mendoza; Bonnie Hoopes (2001). A Collaborative Electronic Notebook. Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Internet and Multimedia Systems and Applications.
  2. ^ Myers, James (2003). Collaborative Electronic Notebooks as Electronic Records:Design Issues for the Secure Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) (PDF). Proceedings of the 2003 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-10-15. Retrieved 2011-12-12.
  3. ^ Perkel, J. M. (2011). "Coding your way out of a problem". Nature Methods. 8 (7): 541–543. doi:10.1038/nmeth.1631. PMID 21716280. S2CID 13175560.