Help and Support

No! Researchers working outside of a traditional Principal Investigator (PI) led laboratory setting can still use the campus ELN. ELNs are tools for documenting the research process and may be useful for keeping track of research workflows and data in many disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences. If you are working under a PI or faculty adviser, you will need to get their approval to use the ELN.

No, campus only licenses the Professional Research version of LabArchives. However, several courses on campus are using the Classroom Edition; in those instances, the students pay a semester fee for access to the course notebook. Please contact the ELN Service Team for more information.

The maximum file size for upload to the LabArchives ELN is 4GB. To include larger files in your ELN document, you will need to store them elsewhere and link to them from an ELN entry. It may be useful to include information about the server location and file names in the ELN entries that point to linked files. Remember that if you move a linked file, the link will break in LabArchives – so it’s good to have a plan in place for file storage in and out of the ELN.

Yes. The ELN is currently funded under the Campus Software Library, and campus is committed providing ELN access to researchers. However, as with all software licensed by campus, there may be need for us to change platforms and move from LabArchives to another ELN. If this happens, the ELN Service Team will be in contact with current users and will facilitate the move between tools.

LabArchives, like other web-based services, is dependent on Internet connectivity. If you are offline, or the LabArchives service is down, you will not be able to edit or access the most recent version of your notebooks. Therefore, it is recommended that you establish a backup strategy that includes exporting and archiving notebooks (both PDF and XML formats can be exported). In addition, keeping secondary copies of data and other types of files in another location may ensure your access to critical files in the event of an outage. Note that these are good backup strategies even if no outages occur.

Using the ELN to store your digital research data offers a number of enhanced features and benefits over these other tools:

• Higher level of security and and legal protection
• Permanency of digital data
• Version control
• Assists in compliance with UW, State, Federal policies
• Signing and Witnessing
• Facilitated collaboration between group members, as well as with individuals outside the UW-Madsion
• Continued access for lab members after they leave the university (Box, Google, and Microsoft accounts are deleted shortly after leaving)

UW Madison LabArchives is currently approved for HIPAA restricted data, however we are working to expand offerings for other restricted data classifications

To use LabArchives with restricted data, indicate that you work with restricted data when you Request ELN Access for your lab. Request approval is based on a departmental cybersecurity risk assessment rather than an individual lab assessment. At time of request, your local IT contact will be notified and will be in contact if your department still needs to complete a review. Please check out the links below or contact the ELN team for more information.

UW Madison ELN KB:

• Getting started with LabArchives for restricted data

LabArchives security and privacy information:

• LabArchives Research Data Integrity & Security Center
• LabArchives Trust, Security & Compliance

Additional security and privacy resources:

• Office of Cybersecurity
• HIPAA Security Program
• Office of Compliance (HIPAA)
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Policy Library
• University of Wisconsin System Policy Library

If you see the following message, ensure that a notebook owner (PI) adds you as a user of a notebook.

“Sorry, you are not authorized to create a notebook. Please contact your PI or site administrator to give you access to a notebook.”

If this message still persists, ensure

1. You are trying to create an account and sign in with the same email your PI used to share the notebook with
2. Your web browser is up to date and your browsing history and cookie cache is cleared

If you see the following message, make sure you have created an account through LabArchives.

“Your institution has not yet authorized you for LabArchives access. Please contact your institution’s LabArchives administrator for assistance. [Error: no authorized entitlement(s)] unspecified. If the problem persists, contact your institution’s help desk”

If this message still persists, contact the ELN service team and we will troubleshoot access for you.

If you are a new PI to LabArchives, you will need to request access through our initial access request form.