With thanks to Mary Donaldson, University of Glasgow for capturing these highlights of this drop-in session.
On the 20th August 2026 we held the second drop-in session for our wider Research Notebook Community. This was an informal session without an agenda which provided an opportunity for people to discuss topics of interest or bring up questions in the group situation.
To start us off, PSDI announced that they have just published their white paper on their experience of rolling out an ELN in the chemistry department at Southampton. https://zenodo.org/records/22014573/latest
Discussion:
Where to start with ELNs? Is it a good idea to aim for the same ELN for all schools / departments? They don’t all have the same functionality. Is it better to focus on individual disciplines?
PSDI decided to specifically focus on Chemistry because their resource came from that department. They worked with the department to find a solution that met the needs of that department (while trying to get something that could provide wider flexibility for the future). The trial roll-out was successful and the tool is now implemented in the chemistry department (see link to white paper above). They are about to start a trial in Cancer Sciences.
Another facility has been looking at ELNs. They surveyed their scientists (what do they currently use? What are they familiar with from other institutions and facilities? What would they like?). An observation from feedback was that something resembling a free text document where scientists can add any info relevant to the experiment would be most useful. Also helps if it can be connected to the equipment with direct automatic input from machines to the ELN. It must be able to connect to multiple systems to gather all the information about an experiment.
A third institution that has a well-established ELN process started by asking what users wanted. They discovered that when you ask this, you find out that users all want different things but the most important thing was to document the science accurately, capturing all aspects of the process. To enable this, the institute went down a very general route using a wiki. It can be adapted for the different user requirements and can be linked to different systems. This has now been rolled out to around 40 groups and they haven’t yet found anything it can’t do. The wiki runs on the Confluence platform. The support team provide a template for the wiki and group leaders control access. Guidance to researchers is provided to researchers in Standard Operating Procedures and can be demonstrated to users. Drop-in sessions are also planned to provide additional support.
There are lots of case studies and resources available in the community:
ELN finder – good comparison of the ELNs currently available (mostly academic focussed). Can filter based on approx. 40 criteria and different connectivity and module options. https://eln-finder.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/
Case study on ELNs at the University of Glasgow (the situation up until 2020 still pertinent): https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/220623/.
Glasgow guide on using OneNote as an ELN: https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/220623/
PSDI guidance on OneNote https://guidance.psdi.ac.uk/docusaurus-pages/docs/guidance/notebooks/examples/onenote and case study https://zenodo.org/records/18256918
JISC procurement process.
The University of Glasgow have been attempting to procure an electronic research notebook tools using this process. They have been trying to embed better support for electronic research notebooks since 2012. See the case study listed above. Can’t share detailed info on current procurement situation due to confidentiality of procurement process. What was learned:
- It wasn’t as light-touch as we imagined
- We had to cross-check Jisc’s requirements against our own list. This was not trivial.
- We had not been clear about our user numbers. Although we were eventually looking for a site licence, we didn’t expect high numbers. This affected the prices we were quoted.
Next steps: we will revisit our requirements and try again. This could be a full tender or another approach working with advice from our procurement experts. Once we’re finished, we should be able to share more info on our requirements.
Final thoughts from the drop-in session:
- There are lots of resources and case studies available (see above and other entries in this wordpress site) but requirements of individual institutions or departments can be variable. There is no real short-cut to specification and procurement process.
- An exit strategy is very important for users and institutions but is missing from some tools.
- Lots of institutions are looking for shared templates and guidance. PDSI are keen on sharing templates. They have two at the moment, a general one and a synthesis one. So far they’ve not been asked to develop other ones.
- BZH-Universität Heidelberg have shared a repository for ELN templates: GitHub – sfb1638/elabftw-templates: Repository to share and discuss eLabFTW templates
- PSDI also interested in interoperability, APIs, technical standards etc. If we were all using standardised templates, the data should be easier to move between systems.
Coming up:
Some interest was expressed in updating the OneNote user guides.
There was a general interest in seeing and sharing templates for ELNs (both subject specific and general)
The date for our next ELN drop-in meeting will be announced via our mailing list WGRESEARCHNOTEBOOKS@jiscmail.ac.uk Feel free to sign up via the jiscmail lists.
Please feel free to use the mailing list to ask questions and share news.
