Customize SciSure to work your way

‍Copenhagen, Denmark, October 5, 2026 — Amass and SciSure today announce a partnership to integrate Amass’s scientific intelligence into SciSure’s Scientific Management Platform (SMP), beginning within its electronic laboratory notebook (ELN). The integration connects researchers’ own experiments with external scientific evidence, enabling them to investigate results, challenge hypotheses and explore next steps within their existing research workflow.

For Amass, the partnership opens a route into SciSure’s global laboratory community and advances its strategy of embedding scientific intelligence in the software researchers use every day. SciSure brings research documentation, laboratory operations and safety into a shared platform; Amass adds the ability to investigate scientific questions using both experiment context and connected external evidence.

Amass’s *Core architecture connects literature, patents, clinical trials, regulatory information, drugs and genes. Researchers can follow a question across these domains in one conversation, inspect cited sources and pursue new lines of enquiry as the evidence develops.

Within SciSure, a researcher can select experiments and ask Amass to review relevant literature, compare published findings or investigate possible explanations for an unexpected result. Follow-up questions can test an interpretation or explore evidence that challenges it, while additional experiments can extend the investigation.

“We are building Amass to bring scientific intelligence into the work researchers do every day. With SciSure, a scientist can start with an experiment already in their notebook and investigate how it connects to the wider evidence. This partnership gives us a route to bring that capability to laboratories around the world,” said Henrik Jensen, Co-founder and CEO of Amass.

Researchers control the experiment context they share. They can select up to five experiments, preview the text, choose individual sections and optionally mask compound identifiers before sending a question to Amass. The integration uses selected experiment text; attachments and images are excluded.

“We want SciSure to be the home base where laboratories connect their research, data and the specialized tools that help move science forward. Opening our platform to innovative partners like Amass is central to that vision. By bringing scientific intelligence directly into the researcher’s existing workflow, we can help scientists put their experimental results into broader context, evaluate the evidence and make more informed decisions about what comes next,” said Andrew Martin, Director/GM of Marketplace and Integrations at SciSure.

The partnership brings together Amass’s connected scientific evidence infrastructure with SciSure’s established laboratory workflows, giving researchers a more direct way to move between their own experimental work and relevant external evidence. It also reflects both companies’ focus on embedding specialized capabilities into the tools scientists already use, rather than requiring researchers to move between disconnected systems. 

About Amass

Amass is a Copenhagen-based company building scientific intelligence infrastructure for life sciences. Its connected *Core architecture brings together life science data such as literature, patents, clinical trials, regulatory information, drugs and genes, alongside live external sources as an embedded intelligence layer. Researchers use Amass to investigate complex questions, examine evidence and monitor developments. Available through its application, APIs and integrations, Amass brings cited scientific research into the workflows where teams plan experiments and make decisions.

https://amass.tech

Media contacts

Amass: Henrik Jensen, Co-founder and CEO | hj@amass.tech

SciSure: Andrew Martin, Director/GM of Marketplace and Integrations | a.martin@scisure.com

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Most articles about ELN benefits read like a feature list: searchable, collaborative, secure, compliant. None of it tells you whether an electronic lab notebook will pay off in your lab, or what it will cost you in time and habit before it does.

This guide covers both sides. You'll find the advantages scientists and lab leaders report most often, the drawbacks that come up in real labs (including a few that demos tend to skip),. the lab types where an ELN pays back fastest, and where SciSure's ELN fits.

What is ELN software?

An electronic lab notebook (ELN) is software for recording research: what you planned, what you did, which materials and methods you used, and what came out. It stores the files, images, and protocols behind each experiment and keeps a timestamped history of every change.

Many ELNs also connect to sample and inventory management, usually called a laboratory information management system (LIMS). SciSure offers both, as SciSure ELN and SciSure LIMS, so an experiment record can point to the physical samples it used and produced.

The advantages of ELN software that show up in daily work

1. You can find past work without asking the person who did it

When a lab manager or researcher leaves, the context of their work often leaves too. An ELN lets you search experiments, protocols, samples, and files by keyword, date, author, project, or custom field, and the records stay with the lab.

One practical note: search is only as good as your naming. Agree on how projects, studies, and experiments are titled before go-live, and put metadata such as grant numbers or study IDs into custom fields. In SciSure, project and study fields hold exactly that kind of information.

2. Methods are easier to repeat

In a 2016 Nature survey of more than 1,500 researchers, over 70% said they had failed to reproduce another scientist's experiment, and more than half had failed to reproduce their own. Poor documentation isn't the only cause, but it's one of the few a lab can fix by itself.

An ELN helps by turning protocols into shared, versioned templates. In SciSure, a procedure section inserts a specific version of a protocol into the experiment. Dynamic fields can calculate quantities from what the scientist enters, and later edits inside the experiment don't change the source protocol. A colleague reading the record a year later can see exactly which version was used.

3. Results keep their context

A result without its sample IDs, storage location, or instrument is hard to trust and harder to reuse. Notebook-only tools tend to leave that context in a separate spreadsheet. With SciSure ELN and SciSure LIMS, an experiment lists the samples it used and generated, and each sample record shows the experiments it appears in. Equipment links the same way, and storage is modeled down to the shelf, rack, box, and position.

That two-way link is what saves a Friday afternoon of checking a freezer map against a notebook.

4. Review happens inside the record

Supervisors can comment on an experiment while it's being written instead of waiting for the next one-on-one with a paper notebook. In SciSure, collaborators added at project or study level carry down to the experiments, a section locks while someone else edits it, and text auto-saves with earlier versions kept.

For a deeper dive, check out our guide on paper versus electronic lab notebooks for research.

5. Records hold up to scrutiny

Every edit carries a timestamp and a user. Completed work can be signed and locked. In SciSure, a signature uses the scientist's credentials or a two-step verification code. If your lab requires witnessing, the record goes to an assigned witness who can approve it or send it back with a comment. Signed records stay readable but can't be edited, so corrections go into comments or linked copies and the original stays intact.

These controls support Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), the wider family of GxP regulations, and FDA 21 CFR Part 11 workflows. They don't make a lab compliant on their own: your organization still owns validation, standard operating procedures (SOPs), training, and quality oversight. Our GxP guide for ELNs and 21 CFR Part 11 guide go into the details.

6. Funder and institutional rules get easier to meet

• The NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy asks funded researchers to plan how their data will be managed and shared.
• The FAIR Principles push toward data that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
• In Germany, the DFG Code of Conduct expects documentation detailed enough to replicate a result (Guideline 12) and generally asks institutions to archive the data behind published findings for ten years (Guideline 17).

In some cases, funders and industrial partners now expect labs to keep a lab notebook, and an electronic one makes that far easier to show.

7. Routine admin runs on its own

Low stock, expiring reagents, and unsigned records are easy to forget. SciSure automations follow a simple pattern: a trigger (a record changes or a date gets close), optional conditions, then an action such as an email, a task (with the Tasks add-on), or a webhook to another system like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Sample quantity thresholds can also add a linked catalog item to the shopping list. All of this runs where your administrators set it up.

The drawbacks of ELN software, and how to handle them

Screens don't belong at a wet bench

Scientists writing about ELNs in wet labs point out the obvious: you can't carry a laptop into most lab areas, so notes go on paper first and get typed up later. That double entry is where many rollouts quietly stall.

What helps: Put the ELN where the work happens. SciSure's Android and iOS apps let scientists browse experiments and procedures, scan barcodes on samples, boxes, and equipment, check samples in and out, book equipment, and capture notes and photos to add to the ELN later. A shared tablet at the bench covers much of the rest.

Setup takes time, and the learning curve is real

Someone has to agree on the project structure, build templates, migrate samples, and train people. Rush that work and scientists keep their side spreadsheets.

What helps: Start with one group and one recurring workflow. On G2, SciSure users report an average of three months to implement and eight months to return on investment (ROI), the shortest payback of the five ELNs in our G2-based comparison.

It costs more than a notebook

Licenses, hosting, and staff time add up, and free tools exist. Free can work for one researcher. It gets harder once you need permissions, signatures, support, or data that belongs to the institution rather than a personal account. We looked at that trade-off in Free Electronic Lab Notebook Software: Is It Worth It?

What helps: Roll out in stages. In SciSure, each research group works in its own secure group space, while organization administrators manage accounts, licenses, and settings in one place. You can start where demand is strongest and add groups as they're ready.

Structure can feel rigid

Scientists push back when a template forces a workflow that doesn't fit the experiment. Principal investigators in academia, used to running their labs independently, tend to push back hardest.

What helps: Choose an ELN your own team can configure. In SciSure, lab managers build experiment templates and sample types with their own fields, dropdowns, required values, and conditional sections, without waiting on vendor development. Each group keeps its own templates, while central IT manages accounts and security in one place.

Lock-in and data ownership

Leaving an ELN later is expensive, and some tools tie records to an individual's account instead of the institution.

What helps: Before you buy, ask who owns the records, what happens when someone leaves, and how you get data out. In SciSure, organization administrators manage account ownership and handover, experiments can be exported, and sample data exports to Excel. If you're already facing a move, our guide to transitioning from another ELN covers migration.

Security and data location

IT and legal teams want to know who can sign in, how, and where the data sits. For many European institutes, data location decides the shortlist.

What helps: SciSure supports single sign-on (SSO) through SAML, Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, OneLogin, AD FS, Keycloak, and SURFconext, among others, plus two-step verification and configurable password rules. Hosting options include public cloud in the EU or US, private cloud, on-premises, and a hybrid setup that keeps large files on your own servers. Check out SciSure's hosting options and how to choose a data-secure ELN.

Some labs need a different category of software

An ELN is built for research. If your main need is Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) batch records, stability studies, or quality control lot release, look at systems built for manufacturing and QC. SciSure is designed for discovery and research work, and it's better to know where that line sits before a pilot than after.

Who gets the most out of an ELN?

The payoff grows with how many people depend on the same records and how often someone checks them.

When Institut Pasteur in Paris chose an ELN for its research units, it evaluated more than 20 ELN and sample tracking tools and treated legal and data security questions as essential. About a hundred volunteer scientists took part in the selection, including a six-month trial of two finalists.

Rollout started in May 2021 with 50 volunteer units. By April 2022, according to Pasteur's internal newsletter, 112 Pasteur entities were using it, 80% of first-wave entities had dropped paper notebooks entirely, and the system held about 6,000 experiments, 20,000 samples, and 700 bookable pieces of equipment. (Pasteur's newsletters use SciSure ELN's earlier name, eLabJournal.)

Scientists helped choose the tool, a small group went first, and the institute expanded in waves.

FAQs

What are the main advantages of ELN software?

Searchable records that stay with the lab, versioned protocols that make methods easier to repeat, results linked to the samples and equipment behind them, review and sign-off inside the record, timestamped audit trails, and simpler proof for funder and institutional data rules. How much each one matters depends on how many people share your records.

What are the disadvantages of an electronic lab notebook?

Cost, setup time, a learning curve, screens at the bench, rigid templates in some products, and the risk of lock-in. Mobile apps, templates your own team can configure, a phased rollout, and clear terms on export and data ownership reduce most of them.

Is an ELN worth it for a small lab?

For one researcher with no compliance requirements, paper or a free tool can be enough. Once several people share samples, protocols, or results, or you need signatures and audit trails, the time saved finding and checking records usually covers the cost of a paid ELN.

Does an ELN make my lab 21 CFR Part 11 compliant?

No software does that on its own. An ELN like SciSure provides controls such as audit trails, electronic signatures, witness signing, and locked records. Your organization still validates the system for its intended use and maintains SOPs, training, and quality oversight.

Can scientists use an ELN at the bench?

Yes, with mobile access. SciSure's iOS and Android apps support barcode scanning, sample check-in and check-out, equipment booking, and capturing notes and photos to add to the ELN.

What's the difference between an ELN and a LIMS?

An ELN records experiments: plans, methods, observations, and results. A LIMS manages samples and materials: what they are, where they're stored, how they relate, and how they're used. SciSure offers both, and experiments in SciSure ELN can link to samples managed in SciSure LIMS.

Who owns the data in an ELN?

It depends on the vendor and the contract, so ask before you buy. In SciSure, organization administrators manage accounts and record ownership, so records stay with the institution when people move on.

If this sounds like the kind of support you need, get in touch with us. We'll walk you through how SciSure ELN adapts to your lab workflows, so you can focus on the work you do best without the admin overhead.

Why chemical inventories go out of date

Getting a chemical inventory into a system is the part everyone plans for. Keeping it accurate a year later is harder, and it's where most programs slip.

Labs are busy. A solvent runs out on a Tuesday and the empty bottle goes to waste without anyone touching the record. A postdoc moves to another building and takes a shelf of reagents along. A delivery arrives while the lab manager is on leave. None of these is a big deal on its own, but a few hundred of them later, the inventory says one thing and the shelves say another.

This guide covers the routines that keep a chemical inventory current and how SciSure's ChemTracker supports each one. Most of the habits apply whatever system you use.

What an out-of-date inventory costs you

An inventory is only useful if people trust it. When they stop trusting it, the costs show up in a few places:

• Regulatory reporting.
  Facilities covered by EPCRA (the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act) Sections 311 and 312 must submit an annual chemical inventory by March 1 to their state and local emergency planning bodies and the local fire department. The Tier II form includes the maximum amount of each chemical on site at any time in the previous year and where it's stored (EPA). Empty containers still listed as full make those numbers wrong.
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• Fire code limits.
  Fire codes cap how much of each hazard class a control area can hold, known as maximum allowable quantities (MAQs). Containers that only exist on paper can push a control area over its limit and trigger questions you don't need. Our guide to fire code compliance and MAQs covers this in more detail.
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• Emergency response.
  Responders and facilities staff rely on location and hazard data being right before they walk into a room.
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• Wasted spend.
  When nobody trusts the inventory, researchers reorder chemicals that are already sitting two labs away.

Decide how "live" your inventory needs to be

Before picking tools, agree on what "up to date" means for your organization. Teams using ChemTracker tend to land on one of two models:

Both these approaches are valid. An inventory updated once a year is far more useful than one nobody has touched since go-live, so start with the model you can actually sustain.

Then decide who does the work:

• Central EHS (environmental health and safety) staff,
• Contractors,
• or the labs themselves.

ChemTracker supports all three. Oversight users can manage every inventory, and group-level users such as principal investigators (PIs) or lab managers can maintain their own group's containers when you give them that permission. Spreading the work across labs usually scales better than a central team walking every room.

Step 1: Reconcile each space on a schedule

Reconciliation means comparing what the system says should be in a space with what's physically there, then fixing the differences.

In ChemTracker, you work space by space. Pick a room, then narrow it to a single bench or shelf if the list is long. You can check containers off on a laptop, tablet, or phone, or scan barcodes and RFID tags if you use them. Scanning tells you more: the tool flags containers that are listed in a different room and containers that were previously removed, so a bottle lent to another lab doesn't go missing on paper.

For each space, you can:

• Confirm containers that are where they should be
• Relocate containers found in the wrong place
• Remove containers you couldn't find
• Reactivate removed containers that turned up again

When you finish, you can download a record of what was scanned and what wasn't, along with an accuracy score showing how closely the starting inventory matched the shelf. That score is worth tracking from one year to the next.

How often should you keep your chemical inventory up to date? At least once a year per space is a sensible baseline. Labs with heavy chemical turnover, and spaces that drive your fire code and Tier II numbers, may need a shorter cycle. If one room needs reconciling every few weeks, the fix is usually better intake and removal habits (Steps 2 and 3) rather than more reconciliations.

At SmartLabs, which runs lab space for biotech and biopharma companies, reconciling the inventory for an entire research center used to take all day. With ChemTracker, the team can do it in as little as 20 minutes.

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Step 2: Remove empty containers before they pile up

Empties are the most common reason inventories drift. A routine that works well for ChemTracker customers:

1. Label containers with piggyback barcode labels, which peel off the bottle and stick a second time.
2. When a container is empty, the researcher peels off the label and sticks it on a sheet of paper or a board in the lab.
3. Once a month, someone scans the sheet into ChemTracker's bulk edit and removes those containers in one go.

Bulk edit handles up to 1,000 containers at a time, so it's also the tool for bigger changes, like moving a lab to a new building or handling the inventory of a PI who's leaving. Removed containers keep their group and location data and move to a removed-inventory list, so they stop counting toward reports but can be reactivated if they turn up.

Across more than 30 organizations using SciSure, the monthly time spent correcting chemical inventory data dropped from about 17 hours to under two minutes.

SciSure original research

Measuring lab software adoption at scale

Here's what averaged workflow data from 30+ organizations using the SciSure Scientific Management Platform shows.

01Adoption

Are scientists choosing to work inside the system?

88%

faster on everyday tasks

Viewing a chemical record

17.23 min→1.39 min

Finding everyone working with a high-risk material

14 hrs→14 min

02Engagement

Do they trust it with the complicated work?

99%

faster on complex reporting

Hazard lists across labs and groups

3.5 days→5 min

Cross-team messages chasing information

45 / week→near zero

03Efficiency

How much time comes back to the bench?

88%

less time on admin work

Correcting chemical inventory data, monthly

17.3 hrs→<2 min

Compliance summary for leadership

3 days→<30 min

Step 3: Make logging new containers fast

If adding a container takes longer than shelving it, the container gets shelved and the record doesn't. A few ways to lower that effort:

• Pre-printed barcode or RFID labels.
  You don't need a label printer. Buy labels on sheets or rolls from a label vendor and scan one in when you add a container. Barcodes are optional, and you can mix barcoded and non-barcoded sites. If your containers already carry barcodes from a previous system, you can keep using them. One practical tip: avoid barcode numbers that start with zero, because spreadsheet tools like Excel drop leading zeros when you export or import data.
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• ChemSnap AI.
  Take a photo of a container label, and ChemSnap fills in what it can read, such as chemical identity, container size, manufacturer, lot, product name, and product number. Someone should check the values before saving.
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• Spreadsheet import and edit.
  For large deliveries or clean-up projects, add or update up to 9,999 containers per import, matched by container ID. Blank cells leave existing values unchanged.
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• Chemicals outside the database.
  Chemicals linked to ChemTracker's central database pick up hazard and regulatory data automatically. For facilities products, custom mixtures, or anything else that isn't there, you can add local entries so the container still counts.

For a side-by-side look at barcodes, RFID, and ChemSnap, see our guide to chemical inventory tracking tools.

Step 4: Keep SDSs attached as the inventory changes

An accurate inventory also needs the right SDS on each container. ChemTracker's SDS Auto-Match looks for a recent SDS using the chemical name and synonyms, CAS number, product number, and manufacturer. New containers are normally checked within about 20 minutes, and eligible containers are rechecked periodically.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Not every product has a matching SDS available, so filter for containers without one and fill the gaps.
• SDSs you attach manually aren't rechecked automatically.
• You can attach local SDSs to a single container or in bulk.

Step 5: Check how stale each record is

You can't fix what you can't see going stale. ChemTracker records when each container was created, received, last changed, and last found during a reconciliation. At the oversight level, a group inventories report shows when each group's or space's inventory was last updated and how many containers it holds.

Use that view to plan your reconciliation calendar. Start with the spaces that haven't been touched in the longest time or hold the largest inventories, rather than working through buildings in order.

Step 6: Make the inventory worth researchers' time

The hardest part of keeping an inventory current is getting people to do it. Software won't solve that alone, but it can remove excuses and add a payoff:

• Remove the login barrier.
  With single sign-on, researchers use the same credentials as your other institutional systems. With HR directory integration, access also follows people as they join and leave. We cover this in detail in our post on 5 lab problems ChemTracker solves out of the box.
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• Let labs own their data. Giving groups permission to edit their own inventory puts updates in the hands of the people who actually move the bottles.
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• Show them what's in it for them.
  Where it's enabled, Peer Search lets researchers look up chemicals held by other labs in their department or building and borrow instead of reorder. Labs can mark containers as surplus to offer them, or hide them from search, for example analytical standards they don't want opened by someone else. Fewer purchases also means less chemical waste to dispose of.

Frequently asked questions

How often should you reconcile a chemical inventory?

At least once a year for every space that stores chemicals. Busy labs, high-hazard rooms, and spaces close to fire code limits benefit from a quarterly check. Finishing annual reconciliations before January gives you clean numbers for the Tier II report due March 1.

Do you need barcodes to keep a chemical inventory up to date?

No. ChemTracker supports reconciliation with simple checkboxes as well as with barcode or RFID scans. Barcodes make reconciliation, bulk removal, and moves faster, and let the system flag containers found in the wrong room, so most growing programs find them worth the setup.

Should you track how much of each chemical is left?

You can edit a container's amount at any time, but most teams focus on whether a container is present, where it is, and its size, then remove it when it's empty. Base the decision on what your reporting and safety program need.

Who should be responsible for updating the inventory?

It depends on your staffing. Some organizations use central EHS or inventory staff, some use contractors, and many ask each lab to maintain its own records with EHS oversight. Shared ownership usually scales best, as long as someone reviews which inventories are going stale.

What happens to containers you remove in ChemTracker?

They move to a removed-inventory list with their group and location data intact, stop counting toward reports, and can be reactivated if the container turns up during a reconciliation.

Keep it small and regular

Chemical inventories don't fall apart in one bad week. They drift through a few hundred small misses, and they stay accurate through a few small habits: log containers when they arrive, clear out empties every month, reconcile each space on a schedule, and keep an eye on which records are going stale.

If you'd like to see how those routines would work with your own spaces and labels, get in touch with us. The SciSure team is happy to walk through it with you.