Overview 

The LabArchives platform allows access to notebooks based on five roles. These roles map well to traditional lab/research group structure. See each role below for best practices on how to use each role.

Notebook Owner (aka the Principal Investigator)

The notebook owner, as the name suggests, owns all the content in a notebook. A notebook owner can create notebooks, manage user roles and permissions, share content outside UW-Madison, and transfer notebooks to another user. A notebook can only have one owner.

The Principal Investigator (PI) of the lab is the person responsible for retaining the data. Only PIs (with some exceptions) can own notebooks within our UW-Madison instance of LabArchives. This allows PIs to:

• Comply with the Graduate School Policy on Research Data Stewardship, Access, and Retention, 

• Maintain oversight of how lab members are maintaining information in the ELN

• Control who notebooks are shared with, and 

• Ensure that all members of their research group can access templates, protocols, custom widgets, and other ELN assets by all members of the research group.

Administrator (aka the lab manager)

PIs can assign the role of Account Administrator to team members who will be managing LabArchives on their behalf. The Account Administrator can create new notebooks under the PI’s account, so the PI will be owner of all notebooks created by the Account Administrator.  They also have most of the same rights as the Owner and can invite new members to notebooks, set some permissions, and access the Account Manager and Notebook Settings interfaces.

How to Assign the Account Administrator Role

This must be done by the PI:

• Choose the top left menu that displays your name

• Select Account Manager

• Click the Add User icon 

• Enter the netid@wisc.edu email for the User 

• Select Account Administrator from the Role drop-down menu

• Checkbox the Select All icon to give them access to all notebooks under your account.

• Click the Add User button at the bottom of the page to complete the process

See this article for more information on the Account Manager interface.

Notebook Administrator

The Notebook Administrator role is specific to individual notebooks. If a lab member has this role, they will be able to invite new users to their notebook and set some permissions. However they will not be able to create new notebooks, and their Administrator privileges are only active within that notebook. If the lab is set up so each team member has their own notebook, we recommend having each person be a Notebook Administrator in their notebook. 

How to assign the Notebook Administrator role.

Users (aka lab members and internal collaborators)

The User role can edit, view, and download notebook content. They do not have rights to share data from the notebook or give people access to content. This role is appropriate for non-administrative lab members, like staff, students and postdocs, who are collecting data in the lab and putting it into the notebook. Additionally, collaborators within UW-Madison are also appropriate for this role. These users can be restricted to read only rights on pages, folders, and notebooks according to the owner/administrator’s discretion. 

How to assign the User role.

Guests (Short term collaborators outside of the UW-Madison)

Because we log in to LabArchives with our NetIDs, users must use guest access to add members from outside the university. Anyone can create an individual LabArchives account with 25 MB of space to upload data. Owners/Admins can give guests privileges to view or edit entries within a lab's notebook. However, they lose edit access after 60 days unless they upgrade to a paid account. View only access can be maintained indefinitely. This role is automatically assigned to anyone (including a UW-Madison researcher) when you use the Share function (See: LabArchives: Sharing).

How to assign the Guest role.

Assigning Notebook Administrator, User, & Guest Roles

To assign and manage roles for individuals in a notebook, select Notebook Settings from the vertical three dot menu icon on the upper right. Select the User Management Tab and use the pull-down menu under Role to select a role for each individual. See this article for screen shots and more information.