A Collaborative Electronic Laboratory Notebook

摘要

We have developed a secure, collaborative, web-based electronic notebook (EN) designed to provide researchers and students with a means to record and share their primary research notes and data. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) supports a variety of common multimedia formats and can easily be extended to allow entry and display of custom data types. Based on a combination of Java, JavaScript, and Perl, the ELN provides a hierarchical chapter/page structure for organizing entries and includes features such as search, automated email notification of new entries, and a programmatic interface for automated data submission. The most recent version also includes public-key authentication and digital signatures. The ELN is being used in a variety of scientific research projects at PNNL and is publicly available from our website. Experience at our laboratory and a variety of collaborating institutions suggests that the unique capabilities of the ELN can make it a valuable addition to or a replacement for paper notebooks in a variety of situations.