Experimental records, protocols and failed runs
Can a lab sell data that sits in an electronic lab notebook?
Sell scientific data to AI, starting with your lab notebook's terms
Years of experiments often live inside an electronic lab notebook or a research repository someone else runs. We read 27 documents from 15 of those platforms, the newest on 2026-10-28, and 8 of 15 reserve some aggregated or anonymised use of what labs put in.
Source: Lab notebook software data terms: every row, with its source
Tell us about the lab records you hold
5 stagesLab notebook and research repository terms on customer data, by vendor
Last updated
One row per notebook or repository vendor, linked to the documents read for it. Every answer stands on a sentence from that vendor's own page; where the documents say nothing the row reads not stated, and that silence is itself the finding.
Each vendor's own published terms were read through estate-fetch and stored whole (sha256 on every row). For every document, four questions were answered from the vendor's own words: who owns the business's data, vendor keeps aggregated or anonymised use, training AI on the business's data, export at exit. Every stated answer carries the sentence it rests on, checked against the stored text; 'not stated' means the document read does not address the question. A vendor with several documents reads 'varies' where they disagree. 15 vendors, 27 documents.
| Notebook or repository vendor | Who owns the records | Aggregated or anonymised use kept | Whether it trains AI on lab data | Export window after cancelling | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benchling | the business | reserved | varies by document | 60 days | Benchling terms of service (free offering) |
| Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD Vault) | the business | not stated | not stated | not stated | CDD Vault privacy policy |
| Dryad | not stated | reserved | not stated | not stated | Dryad end user terms of service |
| Genemod | the business | reserved | not stated | not stated | Genemod terms of service |
| Harvard Dataverse | not stated | not stated | not stated | not stated | Harvard Dataverse general terms of use |
| LabArchives | not stated | not stated | not stated | on request | LabArchives Standard Terms and Conditions |
| Labfolder | not stated | not stated | not stated | on request | Labfolder cloud terms of use |
| Labguru (Cenevo) | not stated | reserved | may train | no export promised | Labguru website terms of use |
| Labstep (STARLIMS) | the business | reserved | not stated | no export promised | Labstep terms and conditions |
| Mendeley Data (Elsevier) | the business | reserved | not stated | on request | Mendeley terms of use |
| protocols.io | the business | reserved | not stated | not stated | protocols.io terms of service |
| ResearchSpace (RSpace) | not stated | not stated | not stated | not stated | RSpace terms and conditions |
| SciNote | the business | not stated | not stated | varies by document | SciNote Terms of Service |
| Scispot | not stated | reserved | will not train | not stated | Scispot privacy policy |
| Zenodo (CERN) | the business | not stated | not stated | not stated | Zenodo terms of use |
- 8 of 15 lab notebook and repository vendors read up to 2026-10-28 reserve aggregated or anonymised use of customer data. (Lab notebook software data terms: every row, with its source)
Cite this page
“Lab notebook and research repository terms on customer data, by vendor”, Sell Scientific Data to AI, https://sellscientificdatatoai.com/ (updated 2026-10-28). Each vendor's own published terms were read through estate-fetch and stored whole (sha256 on every row). For every document, four questions were answered from the vendor's own words: who owns the business's data, vendor keeps aggregated or anonymised use, training AI on the business's data, export at exit. Every stated answer carries the sentence it rests on, checked against the stored text; 'not stated' means the document read does not address the question. A vendor with several documents reads 'varies' where they disagree. 15 vendors, 27 documents.
Go deeper
Sourced, dated, kept current.
Who owns research data? The US and UK rules, quoted
Who owns research data: the federal award rule, Bayh-Dole, the FAR data clause, US copyright and the UK employer and database rules, quoted from each source.
Who owns data from a research project in the UK and US
Who owns data from a research project once it is collected: the UK database right and its maker, the employer rule, UKRI's open-data policy and US grant terms.
Lab notebook data export after cancellation, by vendor
Lab notebook data export after cancellation: how long SciNote, Benchling, LabArchives and other ELN vendors keep records once a subscription ends, from their terms.
Licensing research data to AI: who takes it, and how
Licensing research data to AI: which organisations take unpublished experimental data from labs, which license only published papers, and which make their own.
Selling a research lab? Value the records separately
Selling a research lab or a research-led company: why its experimental records can be licensed apart from the sale, and what the notebook terms and the law ask first.
How it works
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Stage 1 of 3
Say which kind of research produced the records and which notebook or repository holds them. -
Stage 2 of 3
We check those platforms against the clauses on our notebook board and flag any right a vendor keeps. -
Stage 3 of 3
You get a written reply about your own records and decide what, if anything, happens next.
No lab notebook or repository vendor paid to appear on this board, and this site carries no affiliate links. Every answer is our reading of a public document, not legal advice on your own agreement. How we are paid: if a lab or research company licenses its records to a buyer this site introduced, we take 12.5% of that deal, with a minimum, as its exclusive agent, or 10%, with a minimum, where its records go into a bundle or the pool, agreed in writing before anything moves; a fee any buyer pays us is credited back to the seller.
Common questions
Can a lab sell data that sits in an electronic lab notebook?
Start with the notebook's own terms. On our board 8 of 15 vendors write that the customer keeps ownership; SciNote, for one, says it claims no ownership or intellectual property or other rights over a customer's research data.(Lab notebook software data terms)
Does my lab notebook vendor keep anonymised copies of what we enter?
8 of the 15 vendors we read reserve some aggregated or anonymised use. Labstep may use usage data for its own business purposes, and Mendeley generates anonymous aggregate statistics about its users.(Lab notebook software data terms)
Will Benchling train AI on our experiments?
Its Benchling.ai terms say it will not use customer data to train or fine-tune any model, with exceptions, among them a model tailored for that customer and use the customer consents to. Its free terms of service are different for public work: Benchling may license datasets derived from Public View Customer Data to third parties for AI training.(Lab notebook software data terms)
How long do I have to export notebook data after we cancel?
It depends on the vendor. SciNote's termination period is at most 30 days, Benchling may erase customer data from sixty days after its agreement ends, and LabArchives keeps enterprise research data read only for no less than three years, with downloads in that time paid for.(Lab notebook software data terms)
Who takes unpublished experimental data for AI?
Nyne and Troveo license a company's own records on terms the holder sets, which is the route for a lab's unpublished results. Springer Nature, Wiley and Redpine license published literature instead, and Lila Sciences generates its own data in autonomous labs.(Scientific data buyers)
Who owns research data paid for by a federal grant?
Under 2 CFR 200.315 title to intangible property acquired under a federal award vests in the recipient, and the funding agency keeps a royalty-free licence to use the work for federal purposes. A grant-funded lab should read its award terms before any licence is signed.(2 CFR 200.315)
Sources
This site's own datasets, every figure quoted from its source and dated:
- Lab notebook software data terms: 8 of 15 lab notebook software vendors whose terms we read reserve the right to use their customers' data in aggregated or anonymised form, read 28 October 2026.
- Who owns a research record, rule by rule: 5 of the 10 rules read in the US and GB put a research record first with the award recipient, employer or institution, newest read 28 October 2026.
- Who takes scientific and experimental data, and how: 2 of the 11 organisations whose pages we read license or partner for scientific data from the labs and companies that hold it, read 28 October 2026.
- LabArchives, LabArchives-Standard-Terms-and-Conditions.pdf
- LabArchives, LabArchives-Enterprise-Terms&Conditions.pdf
- LabArchives, LabArchives-Standard-Terms-of-Use.pdf
- LabArchives, Privacy Policy - Dotmatics
- SciNote, Terms of Service - SciNote
- SciNote, Data Protection, Security & IP in SciNote ELN - SciNote
- SciNote, What happens to my data if SciNote goes out of business?
- Labfolder, Labfolder by SciSure | Terms of Use - Cloud