ResearchSpace (RSpace)

RSpace 2.24 is out 🌱 We've got plenty of new features, so do check out the full changelog! The highlights are: - Instruments as a native item type! 🔬 - Integration with DMP Assistant! 📄 - Relationship links using DataCite properties 🔗 - Improvements to the S3 Filestore Integration 🗃️

Thanks to everyone contributing to our 8th RSpace open-source office hour. 🎙️ Titusz Pan and Martin Etzrodt from the @ISCC Foundation walked us through the ISCC, the open, ISO-standardized way to fingerprint and identify content. Instead of registering an ID with an authority, you compute a fingerprint straight from the content itself, so you can find an asset (or its provenance) again even after it's been stripped of metadata. It works across text, image, audio, video and is already applied in biomaging as part of the BioCode project with Leiden University. The conversation explored general aspects of increasing research integrity and provenance including persistent identifiers for instruments, signing data right at the microscope, and how all of this builds trust in research data in the age of AI. As always, we also shared the latest from the RSpace project such as a new community templates resource and more. Slides and notes are in our community repository: https://buff.ly/KcgpA8C Next office hour takes place on September 9. Further information can be found in our calendar: https://buff.ly/m3m5Qm4 #OpenSource #ResearchData #FAIR #ELN #RSpace #ISCC

Lots of generalist ELNs "support chemistry". In practice, that often means displaying a structure or pasting a reaction scheme as an image. The actual chemistry work still happens in other tools or has to be done manually. We took a different path: a year ago we switched from a proprietary solution to an open chemistry engine (Ketcher, OpenBabel, Indigo) in our public codebase. That openness gives us, and our community, the agency to provide full chemistry workflows in RSpace, from the experiment to sample management, and sharing chemistry data with the wider RSpace ecosystem. Read more about where we are and what's coming next in our latest blog post: https://buff.ly/Glt8kMF All of this is continuously developed based upon feedback from users and the community. If something doesn't fit the way your lab works, let us know.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!

👋 Tomorrow is our next RSpace open source office hour with a guest contribution from the ISCC Foundation! Join us on June 17th at 3pm (CEST): https://buff.ly/ZCE3V8j

👋 One week until the next RSpace open source office hour! Join us on June 17th at 3pm (CEST): https://buff.ly/ZCE3V8j

Core facilities serve dozens of research groups simultaneously, each with different projects, samples, and documentation needs. In our latest blog post, based on conversations with core facility staff in the life sciences, we break down how RSpace maps to different CF types, from minimal-access instrument facilities (microscopy, FACS) to close-collaboration services (proteomics, bioinformatics) to full-service cores (cryo-EM, sequencing). Key takeaways: → Forms give you structured, searchable records for every service interaction, conveniently exportable as structured data → Share groups let you manage client access across simultaneous projects without cross-contaminating records → Templates for user registration, imaging experiments, and maintenance logs are available in the community repo If you manage or work in a core facility, we'd love to hear how you're handling documentation today. 👉 https://buff.ly/lxjKhCt 👉 https://buff.ly/KGxfFin #CoreFacility #ELN #ResearchDataManagement #LabManagement

RSpace 2.23 is out ☀ - S3 File System connector now supports uploading Gallery files to S3, and transfer between filestores 🔀 - Support for transferring forms and templates on user deletion, for easier offboarding of users 📦 - New video embed dialog that supports YouTube, JoVE and TIB AV-Portal 📺 - Modernised our frontend build, including removing the old Gallery code! 🧹 Full changelog:

Lab documentation is often a patchwork: paper notebooks, printed data sheets, scattered spreadsheets stored across local and remote hard drives. Finding something again later or handing a workflow to a new lab member is harder than it needs to be. Templates and Forms are a core part of RSpace and designed to address that. In our latest blog post, we share the experience of a biochemistry PhD student who became a heavy RSpace user over 3 years, and the templates she built to help others hit the ground running, from meeting minutes to cloning plans to reagent preparation forms. We're also launching the RSpace Template Repository: an open collection of document templates, inventory examples, and controlled vocabularies covering real research workflows. What's in the repository: → Structured experiment templates (fermentation, protein purification, PCR, cloning) → Inventory examples for plasmids, cell lines, and reagents → Controlled vocabularies for consistent tagging across your RSpace instance If you've built something that works for your lab, contributions are welcome. 👉 Blog post: https://buff.ly/QWMyNHy 👉 Template repository: https://buff.ly/KGxfFin #ELN #ResearchDataManagement #Templates

In a new blog post on the CSCCE website, we’re reflecting on the pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program: a 12-week training we ran at the end of 2025 for small teams and individuals representing 24 differing scientific open-source projects. “This training helps build an understanding of the important social aspects to technical work. The specific regard to distributed team work and coordination in open source technical projects is unique.” – Birdaro 2025 participant The program combined CSCCE mini-workshops exploring governance topics and a practical course on creating contributor guides and team playbooks with lightning talks by participants that surfaced common approaches in open-source. Together, this resulted in a “governance and documentation” module that we plan to be the first of several Birdaro training modules. Read more about Birdaro’s impact so far: https://lnkd.in/g3hvyqV5 We’re now actively seeking follow-on funding for the next module of Birdaro. If you’re interested either as a supporter or participant in a future version of the program, please reach out to info@birdaro.org to help us make this happen.