Survey 3rd-party ELNs for integration

Labs are using ELNs to acquire lab data. ELN is a broad term with many slightly different interpretations and there is a wide variety of ELNs with some functionally shared and some functionality being unique. The overall FAIRmat approach calls for an integration of ELNs into NOMAD. Currently, it is fully open how such an integration can look like. Ideally, we would survey some common information from all potential ELNs.

This might help as an introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mXJJH_sTVw&list=PLrRaxjvn6FDVZvROmQW_zmIyhDMMJfwZL&index=2

We can collect all information in this thread for now.

These these the ELN that come up most often in FAIRmat context:

• elabFTW
• labfolder
• chemmotion

This is the information we need:

• license information, business/development model, i.e. can we use it, can we contribute to it, etc.
• technology stack: front end, back end, how is the data internally stored
• data model: which entities are supported, key properties for each entity, can the entities be extended, is there a schema, can the scheme be extened, support for standardized formats.
• API: does it exist, link to API reference documentation, what can be exported with API (data, metadata, files, which entities, etc.), API standards used, a few example requests/responses
• how does the user management work, how does one authenticate in the API, can the user management be "linked" with other IDPs

We should have a table with very brief information on all ELNs and a section on each ELN with details.

Why is this information important? Ideally, we could model the entities of each ELN as a metainfo package and use ELN APIs to create uploads with all data from an ELN (or some query on an ELN) that populate the ELN's metainfo definitions.