RSpace is currently offered to Harvard faculty PIs and their lab members. PIs with a Harvard appointment (e.g., faculty in FAS or SEAS) can request a lab group in RSpace. Once the PI’s RSpace lab is set up, any members of that lab (students, postdocs, technicians, lab managers) can get accounts as part of the group.
Individual researchers cannot sign up on their own for Harvard’s RSpace instance. Instead, the Principal Investigator must initiate the onboarding. The PI should fill out the Harvard RSpace ELN Onboarding Request Form to get things started. This form is typically processed within a few business days. After that, accounts are created for the PI and any lab members they’ve identified. Lab members might receive an invite or confirmation email. Once you have an account, you will use your HarvardKey to log in at the RSpace portal (no separate username/password needed).
The RSpace service at Harvard is institutionally supported for affiliates of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Division of Science and will remain free of charge going forward.
RSpace is considered a secure system for most research data, but it has limits. At Harvard, RSpace is approved for data classified up to Security Level 3. This includes a wide range of research data (such as de-identified human subject data, internal data that isn’t public, etc.). Level 4 data (highly sensitive information, e.g. patient health identifiers, highly confidential institutional data) should not be stored in RSpace. If your research involves Level 4 data, consult Harvard compliance offices for guidance on specialized solutions. For the vast majority of lab research data, RSpace provides a secure environment: it requires HarvardKey authentication, uses encrypted connections, and Harvard’s instance is isolated from other institutions’ data. Additionally, RSpace’s audit logs mean you have a trail of who accessed or modified data. Always follow Harvard IRB and data classification guidelines applicable to your project, but know that using RSpace meets the standard for secure electronic note-keeping for most labs.
You (and Harvard) do. All research content in RSpace is owned by the researchers and Harvard University, not by the RSpace company. Harvard’s agreement ensures that your data remains your intellectual property. If you decide to leave RSpace or Harvard, you can export your data (and should do so for archiving). PIs retain control over the data their team puts into the notebook. RSpace’s role is to host and manage the data under Harvard’s direction.
Yes. RSpace provides built-in export tools. You can export individual pages, entire notebooks, or your whole RSpace account data. The exports can be in formats like HTML (with embedded images), PDF, Word documents, or XML. These exports preserve your content and formatting, and the HTML export is useful because it maintains an offline-browsable version of your notebook (you can click through it like a website). If your project is ending or you’re leaving Harvard, it’s straightforward to export everything for safekeeping or transfer. Also, within RSpace you can download individual files that you attached at any time. In short, you’re not locked in and your data remains portable.
RSpace has a number of integrations that extend its functionality:
It connects with Dataverse for publishing or storing datasets associated with your notes .
It works with DMPTool (Data Management Plan Tool) and Protocols.io, meaning you can import your DMP or protocols and link them to your experiments.
For file storage, RSpace integrates with OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Amazon S3. You can pull files in from these services or send files out to them.
There’s integration with GitHub (useful for version controlling analysis code or scripts that relate to your notebook).
If you use computational notebooks, RSpace’s integration with Jupyter Notebook lets you incorporate live code/results in your ELN.
The Inventory module in RSpace can be considered an integration as well! It links your sample tracking directly with your notebook entries.
RSpace also has an API, which more advanced users can use to script interactions (for instance, pulling data from RSpace programmatically or pushing results from lab instrumentation into RSpace).
Harvard’s instance of RSpace aligns closely with the University’s Research Data Management policies as outlined by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR). These policies emphasize data integrity, reproducibility, and long-term accessibility. RSpace supports these priorities through features such as version control, audit trails, structured documentation, and compliance with standards including 21 CFR Part 11 and the FAIR principles. It helps researchers meet both internal requirements and external funder expectations.
There are a few avenues for help:
Within RSpace, click under Our Product --> Documentation to search the RSpace knowledge base or view guides (this can answer many “How do I do X?” questions).
Reach out to RSpace support: send an email to support@researchspace.com describing the issue, or contact the FAS RC support (rdm@rc.fas.harvard.edu) especially if it’s about setting up or using RSpace in the Harvard context. They can assist or escalate the issue as needed.