Documentation

Chemotion is an Open Source Electronic Laboratory Notebook for chemical researchers. The Chemotion ELN is equipped with the basic functionalities necessary for the acquisition and processing of chemical data, in particular the work with molecular structures and calculations based on molecular properties. The ELN allows the search for molecules and reactions not only within the user’s data but also in conventional external sources as provided by SciFinder and PubChem. The ELN provides tools to share data in the Chemotion Data Repository. More information available at: Tremouilhac, P., Nguyen, A., Huang, Y. et al. Chemotion ELN: an Open Source electronic lab notebook for chemists in academia. J Cheminform 9, 54 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-017-0240-0

The Data Curation primers are documents used as a reference to curate research data within a specific discipline area or when using certain software or data types. They are developed during a series of workshops were attendees get input from a mentor of the Data Curator Network. The results are published in GitHub repositories. The GeoDatabase Data Curation Primer provides guidelines to manage and organize geographic data in geodatabases, to describe such data using geospatial metadata standards and which actions can be undertaken to preserve geospatial data in the long term.

This interactive on-line course prepared by the Social Science Research Council and the Qualitative Data Repository contains four modules about different aspects of RDM of qualitative data in Social Sciences. Each module is composed by multiple lessons and can also function as a stand-alone resource to be completed individually. Most lessons include associated readings, resources, exercises, and activities.

The knowledge base’s of the DataWiz is a complete RDM guideline for Psychology research to support or complement the use of the DataWiz data management tool. The content is structured in three sections: before, during and after data collection & analysis. The first section covers data management planning as well as the various legal and ethical aspects related to data management. The second section focuses on best practices and tips for handling and documenting data during research. Finally, the last section focuses on how to share and preserve data at the end of the project.

DataWiz is an automated assistant for data management in Psychology, developed by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information. It is a web-based application that supports researchers in planning their data management before the project starts and in managing their research data during the project. It provides functions to cover the entire research data lifecycle: data preparation, documentation and archiving. It also provides a digital collaborative working environment for you and your team. With DataWiz researchers can reduce the time spent on RDM, increase the quality and ensure the long-term reusability of research data.

This guideline helps researchers to use OneNote as an Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN). It provides tips to adapt OneNote to an ELN workflow with a focus on the biomedical sciences, which can be adjusted to other nonscientific ELNs. It covers several topics such as how to structure and label experiments, data acquisition and representation. It also provides relevant recommendations on how to approach data storage and security to comply with applicable legislation.

The University of Glasgow has prepared a detailed guideline on how to use Microsoft OneNote as a research notebook. It guides researchers from the initial steps of accessing the software and setting up a notebook, to more specific functionalities such as inserting tables, images, equations. It also provides information onhow to manage and share content.

The University of Glasgow run a work package between 2018 and 2019 to investigate the user requirements for Electronic Research Notebooks (ELNs). They organized a series of workshops to understand user needs, and run software trials to increase the interest and understand barriers inhibiting the uptake of ELNs. The results and conclusions of the exercise have now been published.

Utrecht University organises regular workshops to teach R basics: data handling and visualisation, and making research reproducible with R and R Markdown. The R Café has a more informal set-up, where researchers with R programming skills can meet and learn from each other, or from prepared exercises.

The University of Helsinki created, upon request, a compact guide for researchers to help with research data documentation. It first introduces the basic elements of documentation, and then provides practical instructions and strategies to proceed with documentation during the research project, but also for the publishing phase.