Using an Electronic Lab Notebook System to Promote Data Management Plans

Abstract

Background: At an academic medical center, the rollout of an electronic lab notebook (ELN) system includes tailored support to develop functional data management plans for participating research labs. The office of research is sponsoring the adoption of the ELN and, while administrative drivers include improving lab efficiency and reducing institutional liability, the pilot primarily focuses on the benefits of ELN use. In particular, improving the collection of and access to experimental information for research projects. The creation of data management plans, in conjunction with the ELN adoption, allows participants to engage more holistically with the research processes of their laboratories. Description: Nine research labs are identified as “early adopters” for the 4-month pilot of the selected electronic lab notebook system. As participants in the pilot, these labs are expected to a) attend training on the ELN system and b) evaluate their current information and data management practices. To ensure these expectations are met, the institution's ELN implementation team meets with each lab prior to conducting the ELN training to discuss how they manage (i.e., organize, store, and share) research data. These consults result in a draft data management plan that reflect the labs’ current research data management processes and provides suggestions for potential areas of improvement/streamlining. The training on the functionality of the ELN follows this to encourage participating labs to develop concrete strategies for integrating the ELN into the research data/information management processes of the lab overall. Conclusion: As of this submission, the authors have worked directly with four of the “early adopter” labs (each with 6-10 members) to review their information and data management practices while onboarding them to the ELN. These labs receive an individualized data management plan in addition to training on the ELN. A primary outcome is to complete this process with the remaining five “early adopter” labs while gathering feedback on the ELN system itself and monitoring the adoption success of the ELN in these labs. A secondary outcome is to “scale up” this program for full rollout to the institution in 2019.