Survey of US Higher Education Faculty 2023 Use of Electronic Lab Notebooks

This study looks at the incidence and extent of use of electronic lab notebooks by college and university faculty in the USA.  In addition, the study looks at how faculty receive training on how to use such systems, pinpointing the percentage that have been trained through their departments, their university research offices, academic library services, the company providing the application, or other sources.  The report also looks at the length of time it takes various parties to get up to speed on use of electronic lab notebooks, and at the percentage of users who try to use such applications but quit.  The study also presents detailed data on the degree of clarity that survey participants have about how to share data with their electronic lab notebooks, and when data sharing is appropriate, and when it is discouraged or prohibited.  

The digitization of science, and the emergence of open science, has made the use of electronic lab notebooks, and the training of faculty on such systems, a highly significant and increasingly important scientific and information services question - and this report helps faculty and those servicing faculty in this key area. 

Just a few of this 99-page report’s many findings are that:

• 14.47% of all faculty have ever used an electronic lab notebook, including 34.29% of all current engineering faculty.
• Faculty under age 40 have by far the highest “quit” rates of use of electronic lab notebooks.
• The most common way of receiving training was through the company providing the application.
• Faculty at the largest institutions have a much clearer idea of the norms and rules governing data sharing than to those at smaller institutions.

This study is based on data from a survey of 731 higher education faculty randomly chosen from a representative sample of nearly 500 colleges and universities in the USA. Data is broken out by personal variables such as work title, gender, personal income level, academic discipline, age and other variables, as well as institutional indicators such as college or university type or Carnegie class, enrollment size, public or private status and others.