Who Can Use It

LabArchives is free for UW–Madison faculty, researchers, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students doing research.

Access works by lab: a PI requests access to LabArchives for their lab, create notebooks and then adds lab members to them

What is LabArchives?

LabArchives is UW–Madison's supported Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) service. It's provided in partnership by UW-Madison Libraries and DoIT.

UW–Madison provides the ELN for Research module. (LabArchives also offers other products — Inventory, Scheduler, an Education edition — but those aren't part of UW's service.)

LabArchives is a centralized place to document the full story of your research, from grant writing to published research artifacts. With it, you can:

• Record and organize experiments, data, notes, and protocols in one searchable, secure place
• Standardize workflows with templates and pre-built forms, so your lab's process stays consistent
• Collaborate in real time — work on the same page at once, comment, and see who changed what
• Share entries, pages, folders, or full notebooks with your team or outside collaborators
• Track everything automatically, with a timestamped record of every change
• Sign and witness pages, just like a paper notebook — to support intellectual property claims, patent filings, and proof of discovery 

Whether you're focused on open, reproducible science or navigating compliance and IP requirements, LabArchives is built to support both: structured data and collaboration features for open science practices, and audit trails, access controls, and signing/witnessing for compliance and IP needs.

A Modern Take on the Traditional Lab Notebook

For researchers who relied on a paper notebook to establish a source of truth for their work — and who used signatures and witnesses to protect intellectual property — LabArchives carries that same function forward digitally:

• • Page Signing lets you lock a finished page so it's permanently frozen — no further edits or additions, with a record of who signed it and when.
  • Witnessing adds a second reviewer, just like an old-fashioned lab notebook countersignature. A witness with the right privileges must confirm the page before it's permanently locked.
  • Every signed and witnessed page carries a timestamp, supporting the same kind of evidence trail traditionally used to establish dates of discovery, support patent filings, and document intellectual property.

What to Know Before You Start

• Storage: Data is stored securely using Amazon Web Services (AWS), with encryption in transit and at rest, redundant US-based backups, and regular security audits.
• Notebook size: Notebooks can hold roughly up to 1 TB before performance starts to slow down. Plan accordingly for very large datasets.
• Off campus? Set up WiscVPN first for a secure connection.
• Restricted or sensitive data: UW–Madison is approved for HIPAA compliance within LabArchives, so ePHI (electronic protected health information) can be stored here. Some data types still require extra setup — contact the ELN Service Team first. See also: Getting Started with Restricted Data.
• File size: Individual files are capped at 4 GB; total storage within LabArchives is otherwise unlimited.
• Backups: You're responsible for your own archival copies. Export a full notebook (HTML + files) or export to PDF.

Accessibility

LabArchives works with standard browsers, devices, and assistive technology. It includes a built-in Accessibility Mode (in the account menu after login) for easier screen reader and keyboard navigation. LabArchives also publishes a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) describing its accessibility conformance. Accessibility Features – LabArchives 

Ready to Get Started?

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Requesting a New Notebook (PIs and Lab Leaders)

If you're a new PI or lab leader and don't have a notebook yet, submit a request through New Lab Request – ELN Access.

Include in your request:

• Your name, NetID, and wisc.edu email address
• Your department or research unit

Getting Access to an Existing Notebook

1. Ask your PI to add you. The PI or notebook owner adds users through the User Management tool in their LabArchives account.

2. Accept your invite. You'll get an email invitation — accept it to create your account. Or go to Current User Login on the ELN site. Check the left-hand menu for your lab's notebook.

3. Use your wisc.edu email. Don't use a departmental address (e.g., medicine.wisc.edu) or a personal email — your account must be tied to your wisc.edu address.
   
   
4. Sign in with SSO. Use your NetID and password through UW–Madison's Single Sign-On, or the Current User Login link above. The first time you sign in, you'll be asked to either "Create or Activate a new LabArchives account" or "Link an existing LabArchives account." As a new UW user, choose Create or Activate, and enter the exact email address your PI used to invite you. ("Link" is only for the rare case where you already have a separate, existing LabArchives account from elsewhere — for example, if you transferred from another institution.)

Note: If your PI hasn't added you yet, you won't see any notebook content when you log in. You can't create an independent notebook without a PI's request — talk to the ELN Service Team if you need an exception.

Summer Interns

If you're a summer research intern, have your PI (or you) submit your NetID through Ask a Question and note that you're a summer intern. We'll provision your account.

Troubleshooting Login Issues

Can't find a notebook someone shared with you?

Start by checking the notebook list — click "Notebook # >" on the left-hand side of the screen and select the notebook you're looking for. You may already have access and just need to switch to it.

Still don't see it? There are two common causes:

• Email mismatch. The notebook owner may have shared it with an email address that doesn't match the one on your LabArchives account. To check your account's email, open the menu with your name and choose User Properties. If it doesn't match, have the owner re-invite you using the correct address.
  
  
• Duplicate account. This usually happens if the email you entered when creating your account doesn't exactly match the email your PI used to invite you (a typo, or a different address entirely). LabArchives may end up with two separate accounts for you, and logging in with your NetID lands you in the wrong (empty) one.
  • Try this first: Confirm the email under your account's User Properties matches exactly what your PI used to invite you.
  • Still stuck? This needs to be fixed on LabArchives' end. Contact LabArchives Support (support@labarchives.com) directly, or contact the ELN Service Team first if you'd rather have local help coordinate it.

Email invite link not working?

Skip it — log in directly at eln.wisc.edu using Current User Login instead.

Getting a blank screen, or pages look broken?

1. Clear your browser's cookies and cache (clear "everything" / "all time," not just recent).
2. Make sure your browser is fully up to date.
3. Reboot your computer.
4. Try logging in again.

Also confirm your browser is one LabArchives officially supports.

Getting a "not authorized" or missing entitlement error?

Access requires being an enrolled student or active UW–Madison staff (including Morgridge/WARF dual appointments). This error means your status hasn't synced to our identity system (IAM) yet — common for summer interns and people who've just changed titles or positions on campus.

Fix: Submit the NetID through Ask a Question with a quick note on the situation; we'll add it manually.

Can't create a new notebook anymore?

Since January 2025, only PIs can create and own new notebooks (this was a policy change — it used to be open to anyone). If you create notebooks on behalf of a PI, they can make you an account admin, which lets you create notebooks for them — they still own the notebook, since ownership is tied to who's accountable for the research.

Documentation

• Managing Users under your Account – LabArchives
• LabArchives: Roles
• Sign in through your institution (SSO) – LabArchives
• See LabArchives: Getting Started for what the service is, who's eligible, and what to know before you begin.

Getting Help

Please use our Ask a Question if you have any questions or email the site admin, Mary Murphy at murphy22@wisc.edu

More Resources

• Managing Users under your Account
• Roles in LabArchives
• Sign in through your institution (SSO)
• Getting Started with Restricted Data
• Add Lab Members
• Sharing Notebooks
• Linking Notebook Content
• Software Integrations
• Mobile Apps
• Classroom Edition

Getting Help

Use Ask a Question, or email the site admin, Mary Murphy, at murphy22@wisc.edu.