Metadata capture in an electronic notebook: How to make it as simple as possible?

In the last few years electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) have become popular. ELNs offer the great possibility to capture metadata automatically. Due to the high documentation effort metadata documentation is neglected in science. To close the gap between good data documentation and high documentation effort for the scientists a first user-friendly solution to capture metadata in an easy way was developed.At first, different protocols for the Western Blot were collected within the Collaborative Research Center 1002 and analyzed. Together with existing metadata standards identified in a literature search a first version of the metadata scheme was developed. Secondly, the metadata scheme was customized for future users including the implementation of default values for automated metadata documentation.Twelve protocols for the Western Blot were used to construct one standard protocol with ten different experimental steps. Three already existing metadata standards were used as models to construct the first version of the metadata scheme consisting of 133 data fields in ten experimental steps. Through a revision with future users the final metadata scheme was shortened to 90 items in three experimental steps. Using individualized default values 51.1% of the metadata can be captured with present values in the ELN.This lowers the data documentation effort. At the same time, researcher could benefit by providing standardized metadata for data sharing and re-use.