When I started my new postdoc position a couple of months ago, my PI mentioned that I could choose my own format for my notebook, paper or digital. Not convinced? Jim Giles wrote this news feature on the promise of ELNs. They purportedly make your projects more organized, streamlined, easier to search and share, and ultimately, make research better. These newer versions have a lot of promise. They are the new corner dealers, some might say. They offer lighter versions for free, get you hooked on their software and then you can upgrade for a price. Now, software companies have gotten smarter. Those that offered more in the way of convenience or ease of use also came with price tags. Their software was too specific and too limited. Over the past decade, many of those early electronic lab notebooks (or ELNs) have come and gone. We weren’t constantly attached to our devices and so the idea of an electronic device replacing our trusty paper notebooks was simply unrealistic. No one had smart phones, at least none of us actually working in the labs. At the time, we all thought she was crazy. Ten years ago, when I was working as a research associate in the biotech industry, someone suggested we switch to a digital form of notebooks.
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