<aside> 👋🏾 Hello, and thank you for getting the Sunny Digital Lab Book.

If you have not done already, you need to first sign up for Notion. Afterwards, you see a button at the top right corner of this page saying “Duplicate”. This will add this template into your own Notion workspace. Once done, go ahead reading this page.

For you to get started, I prepared this overview to set up your new electronic lab book and to get a comprehensive understanding of how Notion works.

On this page, we will prepare your Digital Lab Book and I’ll explain those Notion features that are important for you to use the lab book.

However, if you want additional help with understanding Notion and setting it up as your complete project management system, I highly recommend their guides https://www.notion.so/help/guides. Otherwise, you can also send me an email with any questions ([email protected]).

Let’s get started with your new Sunny Digital Lab Book, so you can better organise your experimental research data.

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1. Add your research projects

First, a bit of background on how Notion works:

Notion’s main feature consist of databases, which are also the basis of this Digital Lab Book. Below, you can find your first database called “Research projects”. This is the core of your digital Lab Book Library.

Within a database, you can create entries. Hence, one entry in the Research Project database, you can understand as one lab book within your lab book collection. I already added one project for you to get started.

By clicking on the blue “New” button on the top right of the database or the row at the bottom of the database, you can add a new research project.

Within the database entry, you can see different columns, so-called properties, which let you add more information about your database entry. These properties are of different types: Text, Numbers, Select, Date, Checkboxes, Relations. We will go through some types throughout this page.

So, create a new database entry and click on the empty boxes within the columns to fill in the details of your project.

• Project name → Give your project entry a recognisable name.
• Status → Select an option representing the status of your project: Idea, Planning, Applying for grants, In progress, Writing paper, Finished.
• Collaborators → Type in the names of the internal or external collaborators that work with you on this project.

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1. Add more details to your research projects

Well done for getting started with Notion’s main features and properties. Now, we will fill in more details about your research project and its focus.

Open the entry of your new project by clicking on the “Open” button when you hover over the entry. This will open the entry on the right side ➡️

Here, you can fill in the scientific background of this project, add links to papers, upload documents and make your key hypothesis stand out.

To have a better idea what your research project is about, fill in the following items in the database below:

• Research question → Type in the one key hypothesis or question that this project is supposed to answer.
• Linked papers: Type in the names of the papers, that represent the basis of this research project. If you already purchased the Sunny Digital Publication Library, you can link your publication library to your research projects here by creating a relation between the two databases. If you want help with setting this up, send me an email ([email protected]) and I’ll guide you through it.

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