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LabArchives - the Electronic Research Notebook Service

A guide on using LabArchives and resources for working with the service

Site-Wide Settings for LabArchives

The ERNS has established site-wide settings for use of LabArchives. These settings are based on university policies regarding data security, retention and management.

Users are NOT allowed to:

  • delete notebooks (to maintain a full record of research conducted at Northwestern)
  • transfer notebook ownership to non-Northwestern users without approval (for the same reason as above)
  • copy content from one notebook to another (to prevent copying data to a non-Northwestern entity)
  • share data stored on LabArchives publicly (to avoid accidental disclosure of Level 2 data)

University Policies

  • Northwestern's Research Data Policy mandates that the university owns all research data produced at Northwestern
  • Northwestern's Information Classification Policy has defined four categories of data based on risk to the university of data loss or exposure
  • Research data retention is defined by the Research Data Policy, the university's Investigator Manual, and Retention of University Records policy