How to use ELNs

This guide describes how to manually create entries and enter information via ELNs (electronic lab notebooks). NOMAD ELNs allow you to acquire consistently structured data from users to augment uploaded files.

Attention

This part of the documentation is still work in progress.

Create a basic ELN entry

Go to PUBLISH / Uploads. Here you can create an upload with the CREATE A NEW UPLOAD button. This will bring you to the upload page.

Click the CREATE ENTRY button. This will bring-up a dialog to choose an ELN schema. All ELNs (as any entry in NOMAD) needs to follow a schema. You can choose from uploaded custom schemas or NOMAD built-in schemas. You can choose the Basic ELN to create a simple ELN entry.

The name of your ELN entry, will be the filename for your ELN without the .archive.json ending that will be added automatically. You can always find and download your ELNs on the FILES tab.

The Basic ELN offers you simple fields for a name, tags, a date/time, and a rich text editor to enter your notes.

Add your own ELN schema

To make NOMAD ELNs more useful, you can define your own schema to create you own data fields, create more sub-sections, reference other entries, and much more.

You should have a look at our ELN example upload. Go to PUBLISH / Uploads and click the ADD EXAMPLE UPLOADS button. The Electronic Lab Notebook example, will contain a schema and entries that instantiate different parts of the schema. The *ELN example sample (sample.archive.json) demonstrates what you can do.

Follow the How-to write a schema and How-to define ELN guides to create you own customized of ELNs.