Electronic Laboratory Notebook: A lazy approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces an automated electronic lab notebook system that simplifies research data management by generating comprehensive documentation from experimental notes and files, reducing manual effort and errors.

Contribution

It presents an integrated, customizable solution for small research groups that automatically creates and displays lab notebooks using open-source tools, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

Findings

Reduces documentation effort for lab workers

Minimizes human errors in metadata entry

Easily adaptable using open-source libraries

Abstract

Good research data management is essential in modern-day lab work. Various solutions exist that are either highly specific or need a significant effort to be customized appropriately. This paper presents an integrated solution for individuals and small groups of researchers in data-driven deductive research. Our electronic lab book generates itself out of notes and files, which are generated by one or several experiments. The generated electronic lab book is then presented on a Django-based website. The automated gathering of metadata significantly reduces the documentation effort for the lab worker and prevents human error in the repetitive task of manually entering basic meta-data. The skilled user can quickly adapt the electronic lab book software to his needs because the software employs widely used open-source software libraries with active communities and excellent documentation.