Online Meeting on Electronic Research Notebooks: Implementation & Adoption Success Stories

Registration Details

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/leLjHEErRRCibdEjiMXwhg

Event Description

Are you considering implementing an Electronic Research Notebook (ERN) for your institution or research group but aren’t sure where to start? Have you perhaps already tried to implement an ERN and were unable to overcome certain obstacles? Or are you a digital master who has successfully implemented one and want to share your experiences? Join us for a thought provoking online meeting to share knowledge around the practicalities, benefits, and success stories of ERN adoption.

Event Audience

This event is designed for anyone interested in digitising research workflows, moving from paper notebooks (lab or otherwise!) to digital solutions, and ensuring well-documented research data. Learn from real-world examples, discover different ERN options, and gain insight into the challenges and considerations required for successful ERN implementation. 

Agenda

• 13:00 – 13:15: Introductions to the Community
• 13:15 – 14:15: Electronic Research Notebook Experiences
  • OneNote Portfolios for Supporting Laboratory and Research Skills Development in Undergraduate Students – Chloe Harold and Chris Hawes (Keele University)
    Digital portfolios are increasingly used to support reflective and authentic assessment in higher education. This talk describes the use of Microsoft OneNote as a platform for laboratory portfolios in our undergraduate chemistry course. We discuss the rationale for adopting a portfolio-based assessment model, outline the practical implementation of OneNote portfolios in laboratory courses across all levels, and evaluate the strengths and limitations of OneNote for portfolio use. Student and staff feedback highlights improved organisation, reflection, and contemporaneous engagement with laboratory learning, alongside improved module outcomes. We conclude by demonstrating how this approach can be transferred beyond laboratory assessment and adapted for use in other disciplines.
    
  • Using a general note-taking software as a flexible ERN – Dr. Danny Garside (Digital Research Academy)
    When Danny was a postdoc in a neuroscience lab at the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC they were tasked with finding a replacement to the lab’s system of paper notebooks. They settled on logseq – a general note-taking software which is open-source and flexible. They will discuss the reasons for this choice (free, flexible, no vendor lock-in, supporting the development of open-source tools), how they implemented it (see this blog post), and lessons learnt along the way.
  • Implementing OneNote in Chemistry Undergraduate Labs – Dr Philip Leadbitter (University of Southampton) 
    In late 2019, the undergraduate teaching laboratories in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Southampton (UoS) underwent a major refurbishment, including the introduction of teaching laptops to the labs. This paved the way for the teaching labs to phase out physical notebooks. Yet this phasing out process was not without its complications, and it was not until 2024 a comprehensive replacement for the old physical notebooks was fully implemented. This talk will share insights from our implementation of OneNote and explain why ultimately a fully fledged ELN is now considered more suitable for our needs.
  • Trialing and Implementing Revvity Signals in Chemistry Research Labs – Dr Samantha Pearman-Kanza (University of Southampton)
    In 2025, the University of Southampton trialled the Revvity Signals Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) across 12 chemistry research groups, engaging 36 researchers and capturing over 120 experiments per week. This presentation shares key lessons from the pilot, highlighting benefits such as improved workflow consistency, ChemDraw integration, and embedded Health & Safety documentation, alongside technical and adoption challenges that emerged. The talk explores critical success factors for ELN implementation, including stakeholder engagement and user support, and outlines considerations for optimising and scaling ELN use across academic research environments.
    
  • AI4Green: an open-source ELN promoting sustainability chemistry – Professor Jonathan Hirst (University of Nottingham)
    Digital tools will be a critical part of making chemistry research laboratories more sustainable. Our AI4Green open-source electronic laboratory notebook (ELN), https://ai4green.app, combines features including data archival and collaboration tools. The application’s design facilitates the integration of auxiliary sustainability applications. For example, the open-source retrosynthesis software, AiZynthFinder has been integrated into the platform. AI4Green features a sustainable solvent selection tool, which comprises the Solvent Guide and the Solvent Surfer. The latter is an interactive principal component analysis (PCA) that provides users with an easy method to determine greener solvent alternatives.
  • Implementing RSpace as an institutional Electronic Research Notebook for UCL – James A J Wilson (UCL)
    After a couple of years of discussing and measuring the potential need for an institutional ERN/ELN for University College London, a decision was made in 2020 that the time was right to acquire a system that would benefit a broad cross-section of the university and the university went to tender to purchase and implement such a system. We settled on RSpace, as the best fit to our strategy and after user testing. RSpace has now been in place for five years – enough time to learn lessons about what has worked and what remains to be done. This presentation will summarize the story behind the selection of RSpace and what we have learnt on the way.
    
• 14:15 – 14:45: Q+A Panel with Speakers  
• 14:45 – 15:00: Coffee Break
• 15:00 – 16:30: Interactive Discussion Session

Speaker Details

Chloe Harold (Keele University)
Chloe Harold is a Chemistry lecturer at Keele University with 17 years of teaching experience. Three years ago, she introduced OneNote laboratory portfolios into the first-year chemistry laboratory module in response to the limitations of traditional hard-backed lab diaries. Since then, she has supported colleagues at Keele and at other universities in adopting digital laboratory portfolios.

Dr Chris Hawes (Keele University)
Chris Hawes is a lecturer and joint programme director of the Chemistry undergraduate programmes at Keele University, with background as a structural inorganic chemistry researcher. As module lead of Keele’s year 2 laboratory module and year 4 MChem research project module, he has followed Chloe’s successful year 1 pilot to help expand OneNote laboratory and research notebooks to the remainder of our Chemistry undergraduate programme as part of Keele’s recent curriculum redesign.

Dr. Danny Garside (Digital Research Academy)
Danny Garside is a neuroscientist and meta-scientist, who splits their time between researching colour vision and trying to make academia more accessible, more efficient, and happier. They are the Community Manager for the Digital Research Academy, and currently excited about the opportunities for academic research co-operatives.

Dr Philip Leadbitter (University of Southampton)
Dr Philip Leadbitter is a research fellow at the University of Southampton, working for the Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI). His broad focus is on teaching, both developing training and more relevant here process recording studies focused on undergraduate teaching laboratories. Recently he has working with the University teaching staff to successfully implement OneNote as a electronic lab notebook, paving the way for a higher quality of teaching for students in the coming years.

Dr Samantha Pearman-Kanza (University of Southampton)
Dr. Samantha Pearman-Kanza is a Principal Enterprise Fellow at the University of Southampton, the Principal Investigator for the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research Network (CaSDaR), Co-Investigator  for the Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI) Initiative, and a researcher for the AI in Chemistry Hub (AIChemy). Samantha sits on the Advisory Boards for the Future Labs Live (Basel) and London Labs Live (UK) Conferences, the Machines Learning Chemistry Project (University of Nottingham), the STEP-UP project (Imperial College London), and the Knowledger Project (University of North Florida), and the UK electronic information Group (UKeiG) STRIX Committee. She is also the Faculty Deputy Chair of the Ethics Committee. Samantha’s key research areas are ELNs, process recording, FAIR data, data stewardship and research data management, and semantic web technologies.

Professor Jonathan Hirst (University of Nottingham)
Jonathan Hirstis Professor in Computational Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. In 2020, he was awarded a Chair in Emerging Technologies by the Royal Academy of Engineering, focusing on research that will empower the development of next-generation molecules that chemical engineers and chemists make, by using machine learning to augment human decision-making. His tenure as Head of School (2013-2017) saw some significant transformations under his leadership, including the building of the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratory and a successful bid for an Athena Swan Silver Award.

James A J Wilson
Dr James A J Wilson is Head of Research Data Services at the Centre for Advanced Research Computing (ARC) at UCL He has led the development of Research Data Stewardship as a profession in UCL, building a team of eighteen research data stewards who run data management services and collaborate with researchers to support good data management and ensure data is as FAIR as possible. In 2020, James led the implementation of an institutional Electronic Research Notebook at UCL, based on RSpace, and runs the ERN User Group. He is an active member of the Research Data Alliance and a co-chair of the Research Data Architectures for Research Institutions (RDARI) Interest Group.