[Bio-www] Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELNs)

[Rob Day]

It's clearly time to make the change to the paperless lab. In tough  
economic times, research organizations all over the word are placing  
increasing emphasis on legal accountability, commercial patent  
protection, secure collaboration and intellectual property rights.  
Subsequently, many researchers are finding that taking notes with  
pencil and paper, and storing digital information in ad-hoc,  
unstandardized or non-compliant systems can be legally risky,  
expensive and inefficient. More and more organizations are seeing the  
benefits of storing and managing their research assets in a  
centralized server-client system that allows workgroup organization,  
controlled access, advanced searching and authenticated audit trails.  
Finally, administrators can instantly see WHO is performing research,  
WHEN and WHY they did it, and exactly WHAT was discovered and recorded.

CERF by Rescentris is a cross-platform, fully compliant, state-of-the- 
art, award-winning lab notebook and document management software  
solution (also known as an Electronic Lab Notebook or ELN). CERF can  
help organizations of any size gather, track and manage research data.  
CERF is also highly customizable and extensible, capable of  
interfacing with other sources of data in ways that administrators can  
closely control.

Rescentris is based in Columbus, Ohio. We were founded by and are  
mainly staffed by former research scientists. We will not be undersold  
by any comparable server-client software solution. In some cases we  
can offer free trials to customers who aren't quite sure how our  
laboratory notebook software can help them.

If you know of any research groups that are about to embark on an  
expensive new research project, a risky collaborative venture, or  
research in a strictly regulated or legally "high stake" sector, I  
would strongly urge you to tell them to investigate the use of ELN  
software as a way to protect their R&D investment and avoid  
accountability issues that can be the result of poor research record- 
keeping.

You can lean more about our company at www.rescentris.com.