ERN Test

A service for recording and sharing notes and data relating to your research

UCL’s new Electronic Research Notebook service is provided by RSpace. Launched in November 2021, it provides a means to edit and manage notes and data relating to your research. It is intended not only as an alternative to traditional paper lab notebooks, but as a wide-ranging solution for researchers who wish to gather their notes and related files in a single system where they can collaborate and selectively share their work with others in their team.

Key features

Free to all UCL staff and students
Easy to attach diagrams, photographs, videos, and data visualizations
Integrates with Microsoft Office, Teams, and OneDrive, plus a range of specialist apps and research data management tools
Research group management for Principal Investigators
Create templates and forms for Standard Operating Procedures or other documents
Selective sharing of notebooks or specific entries
Versioning and time-stamping
Publication to UCL’s Research Data Repository

Overview

Researchers in many disciplines organise their notes and document their research processes in notebooks. Traditionally, these have been paper based and, once completed, have ended up on shelves and drawers in labs and offices before, if kept at all, being archived to deep storage. These notebooks contain a vital record of the research process which in many cases is invaluable for reproducing results.

UCL’s Electronic Research Notebook, provided by RSpace, addresses many of the limitations of traditional paper lab notebooks. It makes it far easier to add and associate electronic content, overcomes the ‘single copy’ problem of paper, helps formalize processes across teams, and keeps an indelible record of the research process.

We settled on RSpace due to its combination of excellent functionality and match with UCL’s user requirements, its interoperability with other software and systems, and its popularity amongst researchers from a range of disciplines who helped us trial the shortlisted products.

Whilst the UCL Electronic Research Notebook (ERN) is already a fully-featured and mature solution, we shall continue to work with RSpace to develop it further, and we shall also be integrating it with other components of UCL’s research data management infrastructure such as the Research Data Storage Service.

If you would like to speak to us about the ERN or suggest further improvements and integrations, please write to us at ern-support@ucl.ac.uk.