ChemBytes -

Experiment Creation

Automatic stoichiometry calculations: Enter a reagent equivalent, and the associated mols and weights appear in an ELN. Or specify a weight, and the equivalents are calculated. In case of starting materials or products, their molecular weight is retrieved from the reaction sketch, and entering product amounts calculates their yield. Such automatic calculations eliminate many sources of error associated with manual calculations required in paper notebooks, and of course occur much faster.

Materials database: While an ELN retrieves molecular weights of starting materials and products directly from the experiment reaction sketch, properties (MW, density, molarity) of other materials can be looked up from an integrated materials database. Depending on the implementation, this can be achieved very fluently during material entry. A paper notebook usually requires to browse through catalogs or tables to obtain the same data.

Standardization: Since individual handwriting is replaced by electronic fonts in an ELN, the readability of a protocol usually is greatly enhanced across a user community. Also, as a result of the interaction with a given user interface, the broad structure of an experiment protocol follows common criteria for everyone in the organization. A well implemented ELN additionally can enforce minimal rules for assuring reproducibility of a protocol. Finally an ELN implements the same calculation rules for everyone; especially in the area of yield calculations many variants are possible in principle, making it otherwise difficult to realistically compare yields.

Searchability

Even when paper notebooks are stored in a central archive, it is difficult at best to find out e.g. if a specific chemical reaction was ever tried by anyone in the organization over the years - or any other not strictly person-related information for that matter. An ELN offers such functionality natively, if connected to a server. Enter a reaction substructure search and the corresponding hits appear instantly. The resulting productivity gains can be huge, since you will less likely re-invent the wheel for something already known in your organization, or repeat things known not to work. 

Intellectual Property Protection

In case of paper notebooks, hand-written signatures are utilized to verify the content of a protocol, which continues to be the accepted method for this medium. However, as compared to the strength of digital signatures often provided by an ELN, this results in only rather limited proof of integrity. Most ELN's today offer functionality to digitally or electronically sign an experiment. It is important to understand that these methods are not inferior workarounds for manual signatures, but in contrary are much stronger functionalities. Thus, digital signatures implement cryptographic built-in means to detect tampering of the experiment content after signature (they should be well distinguished from the weaker electronic signatures, which implement technologically less stringent methods). Please note that in many cases also standard operating procedures (SOP's) must be in place for complete IP-protection.

Storage Safety

In a best case scenario, completed paper notebooks are photographed or scanned, then stored in a common archive. In reality however, this is not always the case, and in the event of e.g. a fire the protocols are at risk. In case of an ELN synchronizing data with a server implementing its own backup strategy, on the other hand, your information can be considered as safe against physical loss. Additionally, there's no overhead involved for photographing or scanning.