Despite the clear advantages of digital notebooks over the traditional paper log, laboratory researchers continue to show reluctance to make the transition. Some of the rationale for their inhibitions arises from the ease with which they can note their observations on paper, whereas their desktop computer will almost certainly be located outside the lab. It is an undeniable fact that capturing experiment metadata at source will produce a more reliable record than relying on subsequent recall.<br/><br/>Using mobile devices to curate experimental observations in the laboratory can overcome this difficulty. In this paper we describe the evolution of mobile experiment recording at Southampton, from an early prototype developed during the CombeChem project through to Notelus, a native iPad application that can interface directly to an ELN and also has a linked experiment planning application. We project forward to the vision of a generic Digital Research Notebook (DRN) that has all the required functionality, implemented with an Application Programming Interface (API) that enables the DRN to be interface-agnostic. Experiments would be recorded in the lab using a mobile (e.g., tablet, phone, camera) interface, using cues to encourage metadata capture at source. Subsequent data analysis would be done out of the lab, using a desktop or web interface to the same API as used by the mobile device.

Mobile interfaces for a digital research notebook

251st National Meeting (2016)

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