eLabFTW.hs-itz.de – an Electronic Lab Notebook for Thuringian Research Groups

Electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) have emerged as vital tools in modern research, significantly impacting how data and metadata are documented, managed, and shared throughout the research data life cycle. By enabling structured, standardized, and consistent metadata collection from the start of data generation, ELNs notably improve the metadata quality. Their digital nature not only eases backup and collaboration but also enhances the discoverability of new connections across the datasets which encourages data reuse. 

In collaboration with the Thuringian Competence Network for Research Data Management (TKFDM) and the Competence Center Digital Research (Zedif), the IT-Center of Thuringian universities (HS-ITZ) operates a shared instance of the generic ELN eLabFTW that can be used by research groups from Thuringian universities and universities of applied sciences. In this Coffee lecture, the TKFDM Data Stewards give a short introduction to research documentation with eLabFTW and explain how institutional access to the HS-ITZ instance can be enabled for interested Thuringian universities & universities of applied sciences.