Electronic Lab Notebooks - collaborative research across laboratory boundaries
Creators: name: Zulauf, Bert
name: Knipprath, Nina
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: ELN
Lab Notebook
Digitalisation
STEM
research practice
medicine
physics
biology
chemistry

description: In times of digitalisation, the most common type of laboratory documentation can still be found on paper: in the lab notebook. The lab notebook is the constant companion of the researcher, no matter whether he changes the laboratory or the working group, or conducts his research at another location for some time. Some researchers treat their laboratory book as personal and private property and are reluctant to hand it over. After it has been completely filled with everyday research life, it is usually stored either in a box at the researcher's home or in the corner of some filing cabinet of the faculty. Even with laboratory books that are still in use, it is technically no easy task to decipher personal manuscripts and to place glued-in printouts in the right context. Much knowledge is lost over time; many experiments are conducted again and again wasting valuable time that could instead be used to build on existing insights and to focus on innovation. All this can be achieved with the use of an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN). Electronic laboratory notebooks are a perfect tool for international collaborative laboratory work. They are in no way inferior to the classic paper form as the general principles of scientific work are followed, outcomes are documented and exchanged, and results can be consistently doubted. In addition, all work steps are logged on the basis of data records, data deletion is not possible, immutability is guaranteed by time stamps and all this is digitally searchable from different locations and across various experiments. With the right handling a quality gain is achieved and additional work in a laboratory community can be prevented. Organisational aspects of everyday laboratory life can be structured more efficiently and can be automated accordingly. Thus errors can be avoided and collaborative work can be carried out more transparently across many different locations. We are aware, that it will be difficult for some scientists to break out of their old habits. That is why young students at the beginning of the curriculum are the point at which to start changing these habits. In this way, young academics, who will have to work with certain standards in research and speak the same electronic language as soon as they work together in an international context, are already taught to use the right tools from the very beginning. Within our research data management cooperation "FoDaKo" with the Bergische Universität Wuppertal and the Universität Siegen, we at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf have found out in discussions with scientists that an efficient usage of the ELN has to be taken into account already during the construction phase of the laboratory rooms. Nowadays a separate PC workstation is usually already provided in the laboratory. However, the interfaces from laboratory equipment to the ELN must be established and through the Digital Natives everyone brings a piece of digitalisation with their own device into the laboratory. We are in active exchange with our Paris ELN contacts and are trying to build up a community especially within NRW but also throughout Germany, in order to fathom the needs of the researchers and to steer the joint cooperation of the infrastructure facilities in the direction of ELN.
description: This Poster was made for the conference "Strategies Beyond Borders – Transforming Higher Education in a Digital Age" 2019 in Berlin, Germany
description: {"references": ["Hochschulforum Digitalisierung (2019). Strategies Beyond Borders \u2013 Transforming Higher Education in a Digital Age. Book of Abstracts. Berlin: Hochschulforum Digitalisierung."]}