News Digest – RDM in Natural Science: Week 09, 2026
Welcome to the News Digest – RDM in Natural Science. Each week, I explore the latest developments in research data management, focusing specifically on natural sciences, and provide a concise overview. One spoiler, it was a big week for electronic lab notebooks. So, let us dive right in.
eLabFTW
Version v5.4.0 is out
The new version of eLabFTW is out and brings many small and some bigger changes as well as on very specific new feature: the dark mode. For all the dark mode enjoyer as well as researcher need to work in dark labs. One remark, you should skip version v5.4.0 and directly install v.5.4.1. Check out the full release notes on GitHub as well as the Deltablot blog. Who else is #TeamDarkMode?
Link to Deltablot blog post about version v5.4.0
Link to release notes in GitHub
FAIRmat
Reuse, reproduce, replicate: Challenges in data reusability
Özlem Özkan et al. published their slides to a workshop called “Challenges in Data Reusability”. I recommend checking out the publication in the following three cases: 1) You are not sure what the difference between reuse, reproduce and replicate is. 2) You are an RDM professional and are looking to add more examples to your workshop collection: e.g. do you have an idea why Gregor Mendel is mentioned in is context? 3) You are a researcher. So basically recommend for most of you.
Link to presentation in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18788185
NFDI4Cat
Update of Voc4cat (v2026-02-24)
With the new version of the vocabulary, updates and changes to the workflow and structure were done, the documentation was updated, and new terms were added. One example: Hendrik Borgelt added terms for Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) measurements. Check out the release notes for more information about the new version.
Link to the vocabulary in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18763620
Link to release notes in GitHub
NFDI4Chem
Teaching data literacy
How can data literacy be implemented in higher education teaching? In a recent article in “Nachrichten aus der Chemie”, NFDI4Chem is discussing three examples from three different universities in Germany, tackling this question. In all three examples, electronic lab notebooks play an important role, but it is much more than just providing a software for digital documentation of the experiments. Very interesting read, check it out. The article is only available in German.
On more note, at the end of the article you can find links to slides of presentations by Sonja Herres-Pawlis, Georg Manolikakes and Albert Kilian Engstfeld providing additional information about the three discussed examples.
Link to article on the NFDI4Chem webpage
Chemotion ELN verison v3.0.0 is out
The latest version of Chemotion ELN brings some major changes to the user interface (UI) and a long list of new features and fixes. Here I want to highlight the new option to select sample types which allows user to handle mixtures much better. Check out the full list of changes in the GitHub release notes.
Link to release notes in GitHub
Everything at a glance: the NFDI4Chem newsletter
The latest NFDI4Chem newsletter is out providing you with latest news, future events and workshops and much more. The newsletter is sent out every other month. You can check it out on the webpage of NFDI4Chem.
Link to the newsletter at nfdi4chem.de
NFDI4DataScience
Searching for NFDI contributions in one central portal
Usually, NFDI4DataScience is not in the scope of this News Digest due to the reason that I focus on natural sciences, even though they are making great contributions to the RDM landscape. Here I want to highlight one of such a contribution: the NFDI4DS Portal. It allows browsing multiple sources for contributions of different NFDI consortia in one place. Check it out yourself.
PSDI
Implementing electronic lab notebooks
The science magazine Laboratory News published an article by Samantha Pearman-Kanza on the implementation of an electronic lab notebook at the University of Southampton. If you followed this News Digest for a while, you are probably aware of the project. It is a great read and easy to share. So, check it out.
Link to the article at www.labnews.co.uk
Software
FAIRmat
Electronic Parsers v1.0.15
Link to release notes in GitHub
Link to software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18802395
NFDI4Cat
linkml/linkml-project-copier: v0.4.2
Link to release notes in GitHub
Link to software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18775492
nfdi4cat/voc4cat-tool: Release 1.0.4
Link to release notes in GitHub
Link to software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18744619
Outro
Well, that is it for today. What was your highlight of this week? Please let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.
Benjamin
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