Image of a laptop opened to display a filing cabinet coming out of a screen to represent a digital organization boost by combining registration systems with electronic lab notebooks
|

Why You Should Integrate Electronic Lab Notebooks with Registration Systems

Spreadsheets for managing chemicals? That’s not the right way to organize your lab. This article explains a better way—registration systems. Learn what they are and how they offer a huge productivity boost on their own and when integrated with electronic lab notebooks.

How to Share Your Lab Protocols and Why It Benefits You

How to Share Your Lab Protocols and Why It Benefits You

Reproducibility is a cornerstone of scientific research and your results need to be reproducible not only by yourself but also by others, both in and outside of your laboratory.  This reproducibility is key for validation of your results as well as to further expand on the knowledge gained during the experiment. In order to accurately…

How to Cope With Overwhelm in the Lab: Taming Your Inbox

How to Cope With Overwhelm in the Lab: Taming Your Inbox

Look around you in your lab, your institution, and even in the world in general and you’ll see how much we all gravitate towards stress and overwhelm. Stress is just the workplace norm. Overwhelm means you are working “hard enough”. Being so occupied that you are frantically buzzing around from one task to another means…

organize a research lab

How to Effectively Organize a Research Lab

An academic lab is a unique working environment. Lab members are expected to take responsibility for their own research projects and perform the work quickly and efficiently. However, unlike an industrial or corporate setting, there are often no clearly defined management structures. This means that when it comes to communal equipment, reagents and resources, individual…

Science as Sport? Improve Your Work by Changing Your Perspective

Science as Sport? Improve Your Work by Changing Your Perspective

“You think you know, but you don’t know and you never will, okay?” was the response an irate Jim Mora, head coach of the New Orleans Saints, gave to an unwitting journalist questioning his management – his point being that unless you’ve actually been in a professional sports team, you will never know what it’s…

Common New Year’s Resolutions for Scientists (and how to keep them) 

Common New Year’s Resolutions for Scientists (and how to keep them) 

A new year means new resolutions and a chance to improve ourselves. All too often, however, these changes last only a few weeks before we slip back into old ways. Why not make 2015 different and make a change that sticks? These changes don’t have to be huge, and often it’s the small changes that…

Spring Cleaning in the Lab – How not to Have Skeletons in your Lab Closet

Spring Cleaning in the Lab – How not to Have Skeletons in your Lab Closet

Most of us hate cleaning and are often hard pressed to find time to clean our homes, never mind our laboratory space. However, an annual spring clean and maintenance of a regular cleaning rota/regime will contribute to an efficient, organized and harmonious lab environment. This is increasingly important in communal lab spaces where multiple staff…

Superstitions And Habits At The Bench: Sensible, Or Just A Little Bit Odd?

Superstitions And Habits At The Bench: Sensible, Or Just A Little Bit Odd?

Everybody is different when it comes to how they like to run their work space.  Some people just find a space in the lab and work wherever there’s room, sharing their tips and pipettes, while others like to have a designated area to do their lab work in, with their own equipment. Personally, I much…