eLabFTW
Service description
Electronic lab notebooks are an ideal tool for collaborative work in the lab. They are in no way inferior to their paper-based predecessors: General principles of scientific work are adhered to - the work follows the applicable, generally recognised professional standards (‘lege artis’), results are documented and findings can be consistently questioned.
All work steps are recorded on the basis of a data set. Data deletion is not possible and immutability is guaranteed by time stamps. In addition, content can be digitally searched across all experiments.
With the right archiving, extra work in the laboratory can be avoided and the organisational processes in everyday laboratory work are standardised, which leads to an increase in quality. In addition, collaborative work becomes more transparent and efficient.
The ZIM at HHU provides the free software eLabFTW for this purpose.
The service is available to all employees, institutes and facilities of HHU for official purposes.
Guidance on usage
Please note the terms of use and privacy policy before using the HHU eLabFTW.
You also need a unique identifier.
Authentication
The web application eLabFTW runs on the HHU servers and is open source software.
You can apply for a new team here:
Once you have successfully registered, you can log in here with your university ID:
New users can be entered in eLabFTW by the team admins via the admin panel.
To do this, the person must be added to the team and then the unique identifier of the person concerned must be entered. More detailed instructions can be found in the HHU Wiki:
Laboratory documentation
In accordance with good scientific practice, the deletion of experiments in the general instance of the HHU is prohibited. If you would like to familiarise yourself with the software first, please use the publicly accessible demo version of eLabFTW:
Employees must be made aware of the correct documentation of authorised research data at least once a year (by team admins or similar). The software is not used to process personal data.
Archiving period
The team admins are responsible for regularly checking whether the specified retention period for stored data (research and user data) has been reached and whether this data can be deleted. ZIM must be informed of this by e-mail (see top right).
No additional fees are charged to users for the service.
Official instructions & FAQ for eLabFTW:
Help pages in the HHU Wiki:
‘Inside ELN’ - HHU user group in the wiki:
Tutorial videos:
- In the HHU media library: https://mediathek.hhu.de/playlist/410
- ORCA.nrw: https://www.orca.nrw/elabftw
Why you should use an ELN: