v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 714 entries across 20 domains · CC-BY 4.0714 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack AStablev2026.2

Lab notebook (electronic)

A digital record of laboratory experiments, observations, protocols, and analyses maintained in an electronic lab notebook (ELN) system, providing tamper-evident timestamping, attribution, and increasingly serving as a citable research output via DOI assignment of selected entries.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A Benchling lab notebook export deposited to Zenodo with a DOI as supplementary material for a paper

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A scanned paper notebook deposited as a PDF is not an electronic lab notebook in the structured sense

Editorial commentary

ELNs (Benchling, LabArchives, eLabFTW, etc.) are replacing paper notebooks for primary record-keeping. As a citable research output, the notebook contents may be exported and deposited to FAIR repositories; some funders’ open-science policies now treat ELN entries as primary records subject to retention requirements.

References

Kanza et al. 2017 ‘Electronic lab notebooks: can they replace paper?’ J Cheminform
Wellcome Trust Open Research Policies

Also known as

ELN · Electronic lab notebook

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Lab notebook (electronic)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/lab-notebook-electronic" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Lab notebook (electronic)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/lab-notebook-electronic",
  "description": "A digital record of laboratory experiments, observations, protocols, and analyses maintained in an electronic lab notebook (ELN) system, providing tamper-evident timestamping, attribution, and increasingly serving as a citable research output via DOI assignment of selected entries.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs-expanded/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/lab-notebook-electronic",
  "sameAs": [
    "ELN",
    "Electronic lab notebook"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

Adopted by research universities worldwide

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