RSpace @ Harvard: Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) Guide

Organize and Find Everything: RSpace keeps all your research materials organized in folders or notebooks within your personal Workspace. The RSpace document editor lets you produce polished, professional-looking lab notes with rich text formatting, tables, images, and attachments. Search, filtering, and tagging tools help you retrieve past experiments or specific data. This means no more flipping through stacks of paper or hunting through random computer folders! Your work is neatly catalogued and accessible.

Real-Time Collaboration: Work together with your colleagues without emailing files back and forth. In RSpace you can share documents or entire notebooks with others in your lab group with a few clicks. Multiple people can contribute to a shared notebook (for example, a project that two students co-author), and you’ll always see the latest updates. Built-in messaging or commenting features allow for discussion right alongside the data. PIs and managers can also view contributions in real time, enhancing oversight.

Integration with Research Tools: RSpace doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It integrates with many popular research tools and services you may already use! For instance, you can link out to datasets in Dataverse, import or publish protocols via Protocols.io, and attach files straight from cloud storage like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or even Amazon S3. For computational work, RSpace supports connections to Jupyter Notebooks and can interface with coding tools via its API. These integrations help centralize your work: you can connect your ELN entries with external data, analysis code, and storage locations, building a connected research ecosystem.

Inventory Management: RSpace includes an Inventory module for tracking samples, reagents, or other laboratory inventory. This is integrated with the ELN so you can reference inventory items in your experiment entries. Instead of maintaining separate spreadsheets or paper logs of your samples, the Inventory feature provides a structured, searchable database for lab materials (with support for barcodes, container tracking, etc.). This makes it easier to manage reagents and link them to experimental usage.

Data Security & Compliance: All data you enter into RSpace is stored securely on Harvard’s RSpace server. You log in via HarvardKey, so access is tied to your Harvard identity. RSpace is appropriate for storing data classified up to Security Level 3, which includes most research data that may be confidential or sensitive (e.g. de-identified human subject data) but not the most highly restricted data. By using RSpace, you are working within a Harvard-approved system that meets institutional security and compliance standards for research data. Moreover, every action in RSpace is timestamped and auditable, which is great for maintaining a compliance trail.

Oversight and Collaboration: With all lab members using RSpace, PIs gain real-time visibility into the group’s research activities. You can log in and see entries as they are being added or updated, which facilitates easier progress check-ins and communication . There’s no need to collect paper notebooks for review as you can review student entries online anytime! The platform’s audit logs and history also let you see who added or changed content and when, enhancing accountability. If you want to foster more collaboration, RSpace supports both open sharing (everyone in the lab can view each other’s work) or more restricted sharing (e.g., only specific project teams share notebooks) depending on your preference .

Data Ownership & Retention: A major benefit of RSpace is that data ownership stays with the lab. All content stored in RSpace remains the property of the PI and Harvard University, not the vendor. Unlike using a personal notebook or a third-party cloud tool where ownership could be ambiguous, here your institution retains control. If a lab member leaves, you still have their documented work in RSpace. If your lab needs to archive data long-term, RSpace’s export features allow you to preserve the records.

Export and Data Portability: Researchers are often concerned about being “locked in” to a platform. RSpace provides robust export options. You can export notebooks or entire projects in formats such as HTML, PDF, Word, or XML with a few clicks. These exports can serve as lab archives or supplemental materials for publications. For example, at the end of a project or when a student graduates, you might export their RSpace notebook to PDF for a permanent record. Having your data in standard formats ensures long-term readability and the flexibility to move data if needed.

Reliability and Backup: All data in Harvard’s RSpace instance is routinely backed up. The system is maintained by Harvard University IT in collaboration with the RSpace team, providing enterprise-level reliability. In practical terms, this means automatic backups and disaster recovery measures are in place, significantly reducing the risk of losing important lab data. This is an improvement over paper notebooks (which can be lost or damaged) or local files (which might not be backed up). Knowing that there are copies of your lab’s data gives peace of mind.

Encourages Best Practices: Implementing RSpace in your lab can help enforce good data management habits. Features like templates and forms let you standardize how experiments are recorded (ensuring key details aren’t omitted). Version history prevents accidental data loss when editing. These capabilities support a culture of thorough documentation and reproducibility in the lab.