JISC

Summary

Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) are software applications that replace the paper lab notebook that a scientist uses for recording their activities and results in a lab.  ELNs are used to record the goals of an experiment, the methods, the observations and results, and any data files created.  All of this information is organized into a coherent record of an experiment, and because it is stored in digital electronic form, it is much easier to make the information available for downstream use by other applications and in support of publications and production of theses.

The adoption of electronic laboratory notebooks in academia would bring many benefits including better accessibility of data and improved efficiency.  A particular driver in the synthetic community is the potential for nationwide collection of high quality complete reaction data identified by Dial-a-Molecule (A Grand Challenge Network funded by the EPSRC) as a key enabling step towards its goals.

For two years the Chemistry department at Cambridge has had an ELN available for its researchers to use.  However, uptake has been slow, which we believe is in large part due to the significant effort involved in adopting a new way of working.

The CamELS project aims to answer the questions: Why is the only attempted widespread adoption of ELNs in a chemistry department – the deployment of the IDBS system at Cambridge – still only used by a minority after two years? What is holding back adoption, can we correct the problems identified leading to much wider use in the department?  How do the lessons learnt inform the Dial-a-Molecule aim of piloting a wide range of ELN systems, including open source varieties, in the majority of major chemistry / chemical engineering / pharmacy etc departments in the U.K.

Objectives

Our eventual aim is to facilitate universal adoption of ELNs in academia, but within the time and financial constraints of this call we have chosen a narrow focus which will provide crucial information for a widespread roll-out.
The project will pilot a software-as-a-service (SAS) approach by having research chemists in Southampton use the Cambridge-based ELN to record their experiments.  The project will thus explore issues such as training, support, functionality and application integration for ELN users based on different sites thus informing a potential future scenario where a centrally housed ELN (commercial or open-source) is provided as a resource to academia.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

The project will:

• Consolidate the ELN pilot currently ongoing in Chemistry at Cambridge
• Work with research groups in Cambridge to review their group’s IT usage, understand their research processes, and transition them to use the ELN
• Implement a chemical inventory system (an integral part of the ELN) in selected labs
• Recruit ~10 chemists from Southampton to use the Cambridge ELN (SAS)
• Recruit ~10 chemists from any other DaM partner who wishes to pilot the IDBS ELN (stretch goal)
• Establish a blog (Twitter: @Cam_ELN) to publicise the project and disseminate findings