eLabFTW

eLabFTW
Developer(s)	Nicolas CARPi
Initial release	February 2, 2013 (0.7)
Stable release	4.9.0 (October 27, 2023; 11 months ago) [±]
Preview release	5.0.0 Alpha 3 (December 23, 2023; 10 months ago) [±]
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	EN
Type	Laboratory informatics software
License(s)	GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Website	eLabFTW.net

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eLabFTW is a free open-source electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) "made by researchers, for researchers, with usability in mind."^[2]

Product history

The project was started by engineer and developer Nicolas CARPi on GitHub, with the first commit coming on March 2, 2012.^[3] The first tagged, public stable release of eLabFTW arrived as 0.7 on February 2, 2013.^[1]

As of October 2016^[update], the project is still actively being developed, with users making suggestions and pull requests as well as finding and correcting bugs. Many features are still being added to the software, which is in constant evolution. It has been adopted by several institutions or labs.

Features

Features of eLabFTW include^[2]^[4]:

export experiments as a PDF, spreadsheet, or ZIP archive
trusted timestamping (for strong legal value of documents) with RFC 3161 compliant TSA
fully customizable database to store any type of data
salted SHA-256 sum passwords
experiment templates
experiment duplication
advanced query tools
tagging
color coded status for experiments
internal linking
version control
protection tools
commenting on experiments
data import from .csv file

A full list of features is available here.

Hardware/software requirements

Minimum hardware: 512MB RAM, 800 MHz processor, and 300 MB of disk space is the bare minimum.

Required software: Docker

Can be installed locally for single-person use, with any operating system (Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, etc.).

See the installation guide for more information.

Videos, screenshots, and other media

A live demo of the software can be accessed here.
The eLabFTW documentation can be found here.
A few screenshots of eLabFTW can be found at the main page.

Entities using eLabFTW

According to the software developer, several labs are already using it around the world, and it is adopted in Institut Curie in Paris, France, where it was developed.

Other claimed lab-level installations include^[5]:

Cardiff University
Hannover Medical School
Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
INRIA
Institut Curie
Karolinska Institutet
Kuwait University
Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Texas Tech University
UMC Utrecht
University of Alberta
University of California
University of Chicago
University of Helsinki
University of North Dakota
University of Tennessee
University of Warwick
Uppsala University
Washington University
Weizmann Institute

Forks

INRIA (French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation) is developing their own fork.^[6]
Opensauce.us aims to share chemical recipes.^[7]
A fork for chemists exists, though it is not maintained anymore. It adds chemistry tools: eLabChem on GitHub