An electronic lab notebook (also known as electronic laboratory notebook, or ELN) is a computer program designed to replace paper laboratory notebooks. Lab notebooks in general are used by scientists, engineers, and technicians to document research, experiments, and procedures performed in a laboratory. A lab notebook is often maintained to be a legal document and may be used in a court of law as evidence. Similar to an inventor's notebook, the lab notebook is also often referred to in patent prosecution and intellectual property litigation.
Electronic lab notebooks are a fairly new technology and offer many benefits to the user as well as organizations. For example: electronic lab notebooks are easier to search upon, simplify data copying and backups, and support collaboration amongst many users. ELNs can have fine-grained access controls, and can be more secure than their paper counterparts. They also allow the direct incorporation of data from instruments, replacing the practice of printing out data to be stapled into a paper notebook. This is a list of ELN software packages. It is incomplete, as a recent review listed 96 active & 76 inactive (172 total) ELN products. Notably, this review and other lists of ELN software often do not include widely used generic notetaking software like Onenote, Notion, Jupyter etc, due to their lack ELN nominal features like time-stamping and append-only editing. Some ELNs are web-based; others are used on premise and a few are available for both environments.
ELN Software
Name Developer(s) Initial releaseCountry of origin21 CFR Part 11 Compliance InformationLab ThreadLab Thread Ltd.2026United Kingdom21 CFR Part 11 compliance available for Pro plansIGOR - Your Personal Lab AssistantWildfell Software, LLC2023United States21 CFR Part 11OpreX Informatics ManagerYokogawa Electric2023JapanChemExplorerLabio a.s.2023Czech RepublicCellPortCellPort Software, LLC2021United States21 CFR Part 11ColabraColabra Inc.2021United StatesPaid plansScispotScispot.io Inc.2021CanadaPolarIDBS2020United Kingdom21 CFR Part 11 LabyKYLI SAS2019FranceGenemodGenemod, Inc.2018United States21 CFR Part 11 CDD Vault ELN Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. 2018CDD Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) - Collaborative Drug Discovery Inc. (CDD)United States21 CFR Part 11 UncountableUncountable Inc.2018United StatesE-WorkbookIDBS2017United Kingdom21 CFR Part 11 Signals NotebookRevvity2017United StatesPillar SciencePillar Science2017CanadaLabiiLabii Inc.2016United StatesChemia ELNChemiasoft Pvt ltd2016India[21 CFR Part 11]MbookMestrelab Research2015SpainSciNote ELNBy SciNote LLC2015United StatesLabstepLabstep2015United KingdomRND NOTECyberline Co., Ltd.2015South KoreaOpen Science Framework (OSF)Center for Open Science2013United StatesLabfolderLabforward GmbH2012GermanyBenchlingBenchling, Inc.2012United StatesLabguruBiodata Ltd2011Israel21 CFR Part 11Scilligence ELNScilligence2011United States Arxspan ELN Bruker, Inc. 2011United StatesSciSureSciSure2010The NetherlandsLabWareLabWare ELN2010United StatesLabArchivesLabArchives LLC2009United StatesSapio Seamless ELNSapio Sciences LLC2007United StatesLabVantage 8LabVantage Solutions, Inc.2007United StatesCERF ELNLab-Ally LLC2006United StatesLogilab ELNAgaram Technologies2003IndiaLabCollectorAgileBio2002France
Open-source ELN software
ELN software Language base License Hosted on Other info OpenWetWare PHP GPL v2 / MIT Server elabFTW PHP GNU AGPLv3 Personal computer or server Developed at Curie Institute, Paris CFWPELN (Cloneable Free WP ELN) PHP GNU General Public License Personal computer or server Uses WordPress, developed at University of Houston OpenBIS Java, Python Apache License 2.0 Personal computer or server Developed at ETH Zürich Kadi4Mat Python, VueJS Apache License 2.0 Personal computer or server Developed at KIT Karlsruhe Chemotion ELN Ruby on Rails GNU AGPLv3 Personal computer or server Developed at KIT Karlsruhe RSpace Java, JavaScript GNU AGPLv3 Server 21 CFR Part 11 compliant SciPeaks Java, JavaScript BSD 3-Clause License Personal computer or server Developed at Zakodium Sàrl, EPFL Spinoff, Lausanne, Switzerland
References