LabArchives

LabArchives is one of the most widely adopted Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) in academia and industry. Designed for scientific workflows, regulatory compliance, and collaborative research, it provides a central digital environment where researchers can securely capture, organize, share, and preserve data.

It is used by universities, hospitals, biotech teams, and government labs to streamline daily lab operations and strengthen reproducibility.

What LabArchives Does

LabArchives replaces paper lab notebooks with a secure, cloud-based workspace that supports:

• Experimental notes
• Protocols and SOPs
• Raw data files
• Figures and results
• Audit trails
• Team collaboration
• Inventory and sample tracking (via add-ons)
• Teaching workflows (via the “LabArchives for Education” suite)

It offers both web access and mobile apps, with strong support for attaching datasets, linking protocols, and managing study documentation.

Key Features That Matter to Research Labs

A. Version Control & Audit Trail

Every change is timestamped, logged, and recoverable.
This is critical for:

• GLP/GMP compliance
• FDA 21 CFR Part 11 environments
• Research integrity audits
• Multi-author edits

No data is ever overwritten—only new versions are created.

B. Secure Data Storage

LabArchives emphasizes data protection through:

• Cloud redundancy
• Encryption at rest and in transit
• Controlled access levels
• Institutional identity integration (Shibboleth, SSO, LDAP)

This ensures safe handling of sensitive or regulated data.

C. Flexible Structure

Researchers can organize content into:

• Folders
• Pages
• Entries
• Attachments
• Linked blocks

It supports docs, images, datasets, spreadsheets, code outputs, PDFs and integrates with many external tools.

D. Integration with Scientific Tools

Compatible with:

• Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
• GraphPad, Prism
• R, Jupyter, Python notebooks (via attachments or linking)
• LabArchives Scheduler and Inventory modules
• protocols.io and citation managers

These integrations help labs centralize all research materials.

E. Collaboration & Permissions

Researchers can invite:

• Team members
• Supervisors
• External collaborators
• Students
• Regulatory or compliance officers

Permissions include view-only, edit, sign, witness, and others—allowing granular control over sensitive experiments.

F. Digital Signatures & Compliance

LabArchives supports:

• Sign-and-lock features
• Witness signatures
• Compliance checklists
• Immutable final versions

This is essential for patent workflows, regulated experiments, and industry-grade documentation.

Strengths

• Highly compliant and secure
• Massive user adoption in academia
• Excellent audit trail and version control
• Intuitive interface with templates
• Cross-platform integration
• Reliable for long-term preservation
• Institutional control and policy tools
• Good balance between structure and flexibility

Limitations

• For highly computational labs, it may not replace Git-based workflows
• Large datasets (GB-scale imaging, sequencing) often require linking, not storage
• Customization is more limited than open-source ELNs
• Enterprise-level features may require institutional licenses
• Learning curve for users migrating from paper notebooks