Here you can find information about Harvard University and Affiliated Organization supported Electronic Lab Notebook solutions. Members of the LMA research community who would like us to share information about the ELN used in your lab should contact us!

HMS Academic and Research Integrity has developed clear guidelines for using ELNs at Harvard Medical School.

LMA ELN Resources

Harvard Medical School's ELN

Research Computing ELN Services: eLabNext

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's ELN

Electronic Laboratory Notebook: eLabJournal

Mass General Brigham's ELN

Electronic Laboratory Notebook: LabArchives

Supported ELNs Across the LMA

Below are listed the ELN platforms that are supported by institutions in the Longwood Medical Area (LMA) community.

eLabNext

Fully compliant ELN, offering an intuitive and flexible solution to documenting, organizing, searching, and archiving research data.
Supported by: DFCI & HMS

eLabNext is a Division of Eppendorf. Their ELN platform consists of three integrated modules eLabJournal, eLabInventory, and eLabProtocols, along with a Mobile app and optional apps and connectors.

  • Offers an intuitive and flexible solution to documenting, organizing, searching, and archiving research data
  • Useful add-ons and integrations
  • Flexible structure for protocol generation
  • Collaboration option
  • Good inventory management
     

Learn more about eLabNext

Local resources and support

LabArchives

Well-established cloud-based ELN that enables researchers to capture, manage, store, and share research data.
Supported by: MGB & BCH

LabArchives is a secure and intuitive cloud-based electronic lab notebook application enabling researchers to easily create, store, share and manage their research data. LabArchives is mandatory for researchers at MGB institutions.

  • A flexible, extensible platform that can be easily customized to match your lab's workflow
  • Classroom edition for students and teachers, with special features for teaching lab safety, lab procedures, and techniques
  • PubMed references entry editor
  • Integration with GraphPad Prism
  • Free version available with 25MB storage
     

Learn more about LabArchives

Local resources and support

RSpace

Collaborative tool that enables researchers and their teams to work together in a way that is centralized, streamlined, and secure.
Supported by: HUIT

ResearchSpace (RSpace) has been developed in close consultation with researchers and IT and research data professionals at leading global research institutions.

  • RSpace is a collaborative tool that enables researchers and their teams to work together in a way that is centralized, streamlined, and secure
  • Integrates with several archives and repositories, including GitHub, figshare, Dataverse, ORCID, Mendeley, protocols.io and more
  • Possible archive management, built-in metrics, and analytics
  • Can connect to the eCAT sample tracking system
  • Supports chemical structures
  • Free to use with unlimited storage
     

Learn more about RSpace

Local resources and support

Other Digital Notebook Options

Microsoft OneNote

General-purpose digital notebook part of the MS Office suite.
Available to the Harvard Community

Microsoft OneNote: This general-purpose digital notebook is part of the MS Office suite.

  • A note-taking program for free-form information gathering and multi-user collaboration
  • It gathers users' notes, drawings, screen clippings, and audio commentaries
  • Notes can be shared with other OneNote users over the Internet or a network
  • Imports: Evernote XML
  • Exports: OneNote binary format (More information about exporting OneNote data)
     

Microsoft OneNote is available to the Harvard Community. To get started:

Open Science Framework

Open source project management tool that supports researchers throughout their entire project lifecycle.
Available to the Harvard Community

Open Science Framework: OSF is a free and open-source project management tool that supports researchers throughout their entire project lifecycle.

  • Manage which parts of a project are public or private, making it easier to collaborate and share with the community or just your team
  • Manage files, data, code, and protocols in one centralized location and easily build a custom organization for your project
  • Built-in version control, granular privacy controls, integrations, and citable persistent identifiers streamline workflows
  • OSF provides highly secure, redundant archiving services for confident preservation of research data
  • OSF connects to many other products including Dropbox, GitHub, Google Drive, Zotero, and more
     

Learn more about OSF on the Collaborative Tools & Software page.

Benchling

Offers a modern approach to note-taking with an intuitive user interface, so scientists can focus on the science.
Free

Benchling: This is a free cloud-based ELN platform that also provides Molecular Biology tools.

  • Benchling offers a modern approach to note-taking with an intuitive user interface, so scientists can focus on science
  • High-end informatics platform for biologics research and development
  • Very user-friendly and quick to set up
  • Useful DNA tools (CRISPR guide and primer design)
  • Templates for sequence mapping and sharing
  • Free version available (academia only) with 10 GB of storage space