When it comes to storing research records, workbooks, sketches, working diagrams, and notepad notes digitally, scanning them is the best cost-saving method. Research document scanning is done using electronic notebook scanning software using web accepted formats.
Field reports, laboratory findings, experimental records, and long-term scientific research project notes are unstructured in format. The terminology and the special characters used in research data require a specific kind of scanning. The entire work takes concentrated effort, the use of tools, and hard work.
The unstructured records are first converted into structured format mainly in form of reports or text and then scanned and digitally stored.
Why Lab Notebook Scanning and Scientific Records Digitization is Important?
Lab notebook scanning is required to create digital copies of records. Digital copies of old notebooks help research companies share the research data. For further research and analysis, it is a big advantage to get access to data and records in the form of PDF or text files. Some of the reasons to create scanned lab records are:
Data Preservation – Handwritten documents, archived works, and diagrams may be fragile and prone to misplacement. They are difficult to preserve for a longer duration. Scanning and documentation prevent the loss of information with affordable and efficient backups.
Validated Data – Patent research and reports are confidential. Creating usable copies by validating the facts to convert them into auditable format is the need of the hour. The structured record storage of the lab notebook provides professional electronic records that researchers can share with the appropriate authorities for audits or as evidence.
Improve collaboration – Long-term research or large field projects involve collaboration with colleagues, cross-functional teams, and external organizations. Online scanned data resolves this problem simply and affordably.
Quick Search and retrieval – The volume of research data is big. The researchers or lab workers have to do a lot of hard work in maintaining and retrieving the physical documents. Digitized records, on the other hand, are easy to retrieve
Control access to confidential data – Research data needs protection and security. Scanned and digitized documents are stored using techniques like digital signatures, encryption, and so on. This provides a robust document management system with strictly defined user rights.
Disaster Recovery & Regulatory Requirements
When you consider the possibility of loss, theft, misplacement, fire, water damage or other potential loss of notebooks, you realize that lab book scanning is an essential part of any disaster recovery plan. Should the original lab books be compromised, you will still have a complete record of research protocols and results necessary for data analysis, scientific paper development, intellectual property establishment and defense, and for meeting government regulatory compliance guidelines, good lab practices and contractual provisions.
Protect your patents by scanning lab notebooks and converting the pages to digital images. By bringing these into digital format, you can easily keep track of who has accessed what lab notebooks, how long they were viewed for, any edits or changes that were made, as well as the ability to have multiple people access the same lab notebook at the same time.
Lab Notebook Scanning Features & Capabilities
Laboratory Notebook archiving requires a unique approach to the data as it contains special characters and mathematical calculations. Expert level team to understand and process the data is required.
Scanning of research documents is done using special scanners. The scanning of records considering the tabular and text format together is also a great challenge while we scan lab notebooks.
To accomplish the task, if you are looking for an agency, consider the following features to get a high-quality scan of lab records.
- Complete digitization of your lab notebooks from capturing, editing, scanning, and arranging data.
- Scan black and white, gray-scale, color, or a mix
- OCR services for full-text search
- End-to-end service for online records management
How Do We Protect and Preserve Your Valuable Research Data?
Want to digitize your lab notebooks? It’s important to choose an experienced and specialized scanning service provider who understands the process of scanning lab notebooks. At SF Bay Data Entry, our process of scanning includes:
High- Quality Scanners – We understand your lab notebook scanning requirements. Our scanning technicians assess your scanning requirements to deliver the right kind of service—considering factors like odd or oversized documents, bound books, cost of scanning, and image quality—while protecting the originals.
Some organizations do not permit the research data to take out of the premises. We also provide onsite scanning services.
Quick Turnaround Time – Need your notebooks or field records for ongoing work? We’ll send an onsite team for high-speed scanning at your premises and return the original notes to you at a super-quick turnaround time.
Are your lab notes and field reports not in prime condition? Our teams handle old records , edit them before scanning. We also use image correction software that improves the clarity of output images.
Cost-effective Scanning Process – We deliver cost-effective scanning of lab notebooks. Our process starts with the evaluation and analysis of records. The parallel work done by the team converts records into scanned copies offering a budget-friendly option. We convert records in grayscale, colored, and with true color format scanning.
How to Choose the Best Lab Notebook Scanning Service?
Book scanning requires a unique approach and specialized book scanners designed to handle the curvature of text near the spine. A normal desktop flatbed scanner requires the user to press down on the spine to get a clean image, which could very easily damage the spine and bindings of the lab notebook.
The top lab notebook scanning agencies use electronic laboratory notebooks (ELN) with flexible templating to capture, store and search experiments from all scientific disciplines.
These agencies use sophisticated dashboards and navigation of experiments and notebooks to quickly find relevant information, scan them, and convert them into digital formats. The digitized copies are shared with external collaborations using cloud storage techniques.
Apart from the highly integrated automated software system, the agency must deliver the best scanning service You must look for an agency having the following qualities:
- High performance with accuracy
- The controlled process with a commitment
- Experience and expertise using automated tools
Learn more about how you can enable the lab record notebook scanning process to transform physical records into digital copies.
Schedule a brief, no obligation consultation with our friendly team to better understand your challenges and find the right solutions to solve them.
We are an ISO-ISM certified document scanning agency known for delivering the best scanning services!
SF Bay Data Entry specializes in scanning Laboratory Notebook Scanning, Lab Notebooks, Scientific Notebook, Research Notebook Scanning Services. Our scanners are specifically designed for scanning bound notebooks, ensuring the integrity and completeness of the digital images. Closed and partial books can be scanned and returned quickly, allowing timely backups of essential information. Our scanning expertise ensures that your images will be crisp, complete and of the highest quality. We typically scan these documents in gray-scale or color resolutions for the purpose of capturing all of the important information on charts and other key measurements.
For more information on Laboratory Notebook Scanning Services, please Contact Us for a free estimate or Call us Toll Free at (855) 722-6669.