The Electronic Lab Notebook That Respects How Scientists Work.
ELabELN is the notebook layer of ELabELN Suite. Rich experimental entries, templates, sample tracking, collaboration, and audit trail in a notebook that scales from a single PI to a multi-PI research operation. Available standalone or as part of ELabELN Suite.
Academic pricing available
21 CFR Part 11 ready
Reproducibility built in
Where lab knowledge goes when paper notebooks fail.
Most research labs still document experiments in a way that would be familiar to a scientist from a century ago. A bound notebook on a bench. A loose-leaf insert with the day's print-outs. A Word document on someone's laptop with the analysis. A folder of photos on a phone. The notebook works until the postdoc leaves with it in a box, until the page with the critical figure goes missing, until the regulator asks for a signed record and the lab has a binder of initials instead.
The replacements that look obvious are not. OneNote, Notion, Evernote, and shared Google Docs solve some of the problems and create new ones. None of them know what a sample is, what a protocol is, or what an audit trail is required to capture. None scale to a multi-PI lab with grant compliance requirements. ELabELN holds the experimental record the way research actually produces it: structured where it needs structure, free-form where it needs flexibility, searchable from the moment it is written, and traceable from the moment it is signed.
A notebook that works the way scientists work.
Eight capabilities define the standalone ELabELN product. The first seven are how the day-to-day works. The eighth is what the day-to-day adds up to.
01 Rich experimental entries
Text, tables, structured fields, images, all in one entry.
An ELabELN entry holds whatever the experiment produced. Free-form text describing the design and the reasoning. Structured fields for the variables the lab tracks consistently. Tables for the readings. Images, drawings, and chemical structures embedded inline. Math equations rendered cleanly. File attachments alongside the narrative. The notebook does not force the experiment into a database schema and does not collapse into an unstructured text editor. Both shapes coexist in the same entry.
02 Templates and protocol library
Reusable structure for every experiment the lab runs repeatedly.
Most research labs run the same handful of protocols dozens or hundreds of times per year. ELabELN templates capture the structure once and reapply it every time a new experiment of that type begins. The template defines the required fields, the structured variables, the sections, and the calculated values. The researcher fills in the data; the template handles the structure. Templates are versioned, so a protocol change is preserved alongside every experiment that used the prior version.
03Sample and inventory tracking
Every sample, every reagent, every container, accountable.
ELabELN tracks the lab's samples, reagents, antibody lots, cell lines, plasmids, and equipment with barcode support, expiration alerts, location tracking, and complete usage history. A sample referenced in an experiment links back to its inventory record, which links forward to every experiment that used it. The freezer-inventory spreadsheet, the antibody binder, and the reagent shelf list become one searchable record.
04 Collaboration and review
Multi-author entries, mentor sign-off, comment threads, version history.
An ELabELN entry can have multiple authors contributing to the same record. A PI or mentor can comment, request changes, and sign off on an entry, with the review captured against the version that was signed. Trainee notebooks get the review workflow grant programs expect. Multi-PI labs and core facilities get the attribution they need.
05 Audit trail and electronic signatures
Every change, every signer, every timestamp, preserved.
ELabELN captures every change to every entry with the user, the action, the prior value, and the timestamp. Electronic signatures can be applied to entries that require them, with signature metadata preserved against the exact version signed. The audit trail is queryable, exportable, and designed for the documentation requirements of regulated research environments and the grant compliance expectations of federally funded labs.
06 Search across the notebook
Find anything you wrote, from any experiment, in seconds.
ELabELN search runs across free-form text, structured fields, file content, sample references, and protocol references. A researcher looking for "every experiment using anti-tubulin from lot 4521 in 2024" gets the relevant entries, not a folder of files to read through. Search is the operation that distinguishes a digital notebook from a digital filing cabinet, and ELabELN treats it as primary.
07 Cross-platform clients
The browser, the desktop, the bench tablet, the phone in the freezer room.
ELabELN runs in the browser and ships native clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. The bench tablet, the office desktop, the laptop in the meeting room, and the phone used to photograph a gel all reach the same notebook. Files sync across platforms; entries written offline sync when the device reconnects.
08The compounding outcome
Reproducibility and grant compliance, by default.
The NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy, internal reproducibility reviews, IACUC and IRB protocols, and institutional research compliance programs all require the same thing: an experimental record that can be retrieved, attributed, signed, and shared without a two-month archaeology project. ELabELN holds the record in that form from the first day a new experiment begins, which means the compliance work is the work the lab is already doing rather than a separate project the postdoc has to assemble at submission time.
How ELabELN fits inside the ELN Suite.
Four platform modules included with ELabELN Suite. The ELN is the front door. The other three modules extend the notebook into the file, instrument, and analytics layers that research operations need at scale.
ELabELN
The notebook layer. Captures the experimental record.
LabDrive
The files, datasets, and documents the notebook references, with metadata and versioning.
LabVia
Direct connectivity to instruments over serial, USB, and network. AI anomaly detection.
LabVista
Dashboards and reports across the ELN, LIMS, and connected business systems.
Most labs start with ELabELN standalone and add the rest of the Suite as the research operation grows.
What a lab-native notebook does that paper and generic tools cannot.
Most labs starting their first ELN evaluation compare ELabELN against two alternatives: the paper notebook they are leaving behind, or a generic note app like OneNote or Notion that someone in the lab already uses. Both look like reasonable starting points until the lab tries to scale them.
| Capability | Paper notebooks | Generic note apps (OneNote, Notion, Evernote) | ELabELN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Visual scan, page by page. | Full-text search on prose. | Search across text, structured fields, samples, protocols, and files. |
| Structure | Whatever the writer puts on the page. | Free-form pages with manual templates. | Structured fields, calculated values, and lab-native templates. |
| Sample and inventory tracking | Separate binder or spreadsheet. | Not supported. | Built in, with barcodes and usage history. |
| Collaboration | Photocopy or rewrite. | Real-time edits, no scientific review workflow. | Multi-author entries, mentor sign-off, comment threads. |
| Audit trail | The writer's handwriting. | Per-page edit history, no signature workflow. | Every change, every signer, every timestamp, preserved. |
| Electronic signatures | Initials in pen. | Not supported. | E-signatures applied against the signed version of an entry. |
| 21 CFR Part 11 support | Not applicable. | Not designed for regulated environments. | Designed to support Part 11 environments. |
| Scaling to a multi-PI lab | Multiple notebooks, no shared view. | Workspace-based access, not role-based. | Role-based access at the project, sample, and entry level. |
| Mobile and offline | The notebook itself. | Vendor's mobile app, limited offline. | Native clients on every major platform, offline-capable. |
| Long-term retention | Until the binding fails. | Until the vendor changes pricing. | Designed for multi-decade research record retention. |
When paper stops being enough.
Most labs do not adopt an ELN because they want to. They adopt one because the paper notebook stopped working in a specific way they can name. ELabELN is the notebook for labs that have hit one or more of those moments.
A postdoc left and half the lab's knowledge went with them.
A grant audit is coming and the lab cannot reconstruct what was done two years ago.
Mentors are reviewing trainees on legibility, not the science.
The PI cannot tell what every project is working on this week.
A regulator or journal needs signatures and the lab has initials in a binder.
See ELabELN in action.
A 30-minute walkthrough with a LabLynx expert. Bring an example of how your lab documents experiments today, and we will show you how ELabELN would hold the same record instead. No slide deck.
Questions, answered.
If a question isn't here, the demo answers it. The questions are ordered roughly by how often they come up before a decision.