I won a new grant (yaay!) and dipping my toes in the role of PI in my university. For now, I will have a PhD, a post doc and a couple of masters students in my team.
In all my previous labs, everything was on paper and very poorly documented (…don’t ask). I myself used to use LaTeX to keep a “neat” labnote. Obviously, it is not easy to collaborate and work with others.
Any researchers here who have experience hosting their own e-lab book in their labs?
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The group I did my PhD in used eLabFTW after I was gone. I heard only positive things and am trying to implement it in my current job (can not really selfhost as the IT department does all services). It should have a system to log experiments as well as have basic (maybe even more) inventory management. As far as I remember it dous not need any “big” hardware, so just using an older computer with a good backup strategy should work fine.
Idk if latex is optimal for note taking, or if others will warm to it if forced, but overleaf is obv collaborative though not selfhosted.
I’ve liked Outline https://www.getoutline.com/ and while I haven’t used it collaboratively, it really highlights that it’s a primary goal. It’s supposed to be a collaborative/dynamic wyswyg wiki thing. You need a SSO service like authentik or authelia for it, it doesn’t do login. But that’s good for security anyway!
It depends on what you guys do.
Markdown is very easy to use. It can be learned within a couple of minutes.
Do you calculate stuff? -> quarto
Modern, comprehensible latex? --> typst
Do you want trackable research? --> git
A git server (forgejo, radicle) can also be used to track issues. Or you may want to try openproject.org
Why is latex not easy to collaborate? Because others don’t know it?
If your university uses Office 365, G Suite, or a similar product, I would examine those options first.