FAQ

See RSpace Community, Team and Enterprise Editions

They are separate deployments of the RSpace system. Community is the publicly available instance at https://community.researchspace.com/; each Team and Enterprise deployment has their own RSpace instance, usually at institution-name.researchspace.com.

These instances are unable to communicate with each other, so make sure you are logging onto the right instance to form groups and share documents!

You can sign up for an account at https://community.researchspace.com/signup. Once you sign up, you will need to open the link sent to your email account to verify who you are, you will then be able to log in.

RSpace Community is the free edition of RSpace, that provides full access to our ELN.

Communities offer a flexible way to encompass multiple groups and labs inside of an RSpace instance. Communities can be based on an existing group of labs, such as a department, school, college, institute or other sub-institutional unit. They are useful to help spread the admin load of the system administrator in large deployments, by enabling them to delegate their work to Community Admins.

On the login page, click the ‘Forgot password’ link. We’ll send you an email with a link that will take you to the password reset process.

If you’ve forgotten your email as well, or entered an incorrect email address into your RSpace account, then please contact us or your RSpace administrator, who will be able to reset your email details.

See My Profile and Authentication.

Your username is unique to you and used to track your revisions to work over time, so it is unfortunately not possible to change it.

However, if you accidentally create an account with a misspelt  or erroneous username, the account can easily be deleted and a new one created with the correct username. Just ask your sysadmin (or contact us if you’re using RSpace Community).

Emails associated with RSpace accounts need to be unique, so you will need to use a different email for a new account.

You can only access an account that was created using "sign up with Google" by using "log in with Google". You can always create a new account using the sign up tab if you wish to have a log in not tied to Google.

See Basic and Structured Documents.

Folders in RSpace are just like folders on your computer, and they can have any depth and number of subfolders.

Notebooks in RSpace are simplified folders that can only contain documents, not subfolders. You can share notebooks with other people, unlike folders. ‘Notebook view’ (accessible by clicking on the ‘Notebook’ icon in Workspace) facilitates easy navigation between sequential documents.

See Notebooks, Sharing Folder or Gallery Contents, Sharing Content.

Yes, you can draw and display chemical structures within RSpace, as well as import, search for, and export ChemDraw files. See Chemistry Integration.

Yes, see "Comments" in The Text Editor.

It is possible that you've been using the Enter (Return) key, which adds paragraph breaks, rather than Shift+Enter, which adds line breaks. Remembering to use Shift+Enter when returning to a new line should fix this issue.

Try saving your screenshot as a file and then drag it into an RSpace document.

If you are using a laptop with touchscreen, see if changing the "mode" of the device from tablet/touch to laptop/mouse fixes this issue. If this doesn't help, please contact us.

See "Add a Form to the Create Menu" in Forms.

Lucene search is a means to perform powerful and complex queries in a single expression. See Advanced Search, or for full details, see the Lucene documentation.

One of the core architectural features of RSpace is the ability to get data out, at any time, in a variety of formats – Word, PDF, HTML, XML — and at every level of granularity from a single document to multiple documents to all work done by a lab to everything in the system. Individuals can export their own work, PI’s can export the lab’s work, and sysadmins can perform bulk export. In this way RSpace is designed to enable easy re-use of data outside RSpace, and to avoid vendor lock in in any way, shape or form.

See Export Options, Export Formats, and Exporting a LabGroup’s Work for more information.

We have written scripts that support programmatic scheduled exports of work at the lab level using the RSpace API, and we provide a feature to schedule bulk exports of data from RSpace to a repository designated by the institution with additional hashing to provide 100% certainty that the documents have not been altered after they left RSpace. All of this is under the institution’s control: you can establish the controls and SOPs you want about which kinds of user can perform which kinds of export.

On RSpace Community, for GDPR compliance, we are required to disable and eventually delete inactive accounts from the system after 12 months of inactivity.

On RSpace Team and Enterprise Edition, your institution controls user management. We would never delete a user or a server without warning, but we don't have any control over your institution's data policies. When a user account is deactivated the user can no longer access the system, but their data is usually retained unless the institute decides to delete it. When a user account has been deactivated another user can take that account, i.e. the licenses are reusable. In the case of a site license there is an unlimited number of accounts. If you, your lab, or your organization decide to stop using RSpace for any reason, or if you deliberately or accidentally allow your license to expire, don't panic. Your server will enter a safe, read-only mode. Users will still see an on-screen warning, and will be able to access and export their data for as long as the server host infrastructure exists. However, eventually, your IT team (for on-premise systems) or Amazon / Researchspace (for a hosted system) will shut down the environment and all data will be irretrievably deleted. Therefore, when you see an on-screen warning that your license has expired, you should either renew your service contract, or start thinking about moving your data to a new home. Note that one option is to export your data as XML and move it to a different RSpace server. See also Long-term Data Management and Leaving RSpace

RSpace supports connectivity with other data and file sources. This includes integrations with the most popular file sync and share apps, i.e. Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and One Drive (see Cloud Storage Integrations), and Egnyte, a super-secure solution that is widely used by biotechs.

RSpace Enterprise also supports linking to lab and institutional file stores where typically big data — e.g. sequencing data and images — is already stored in a structured format (see Configuring Institutional File Systems). RSpace can communicate with file stores using common protocols like CIFS, Samba and DFS, and has a UI which permits the creation of these links and then the ability to search the folder structure and select an item to which a link can be made in an RSpace document. Each user can access the external files to which they have permission.

You can export your data in PDF, .DOC (MS Word), HTML or XML format. Learn how to do so in Export Options.

Yes, please see Migrating Data from Community or Test Server to Enterprise.

RSpace never actually deletes data from the server (in compliance with 21CFR11). See "Restoring Deleted Items" in Revisions and Deletions.

It is possible to restore any previous version of a document in RSpace, see Revisions and Deletions.

See Revisions and Deletions.

RSpace Enterprise customers can configure RSpace to communicate with their internal file-servers, enabling links to be made to images on your microscope servers. RSpace Community users have the options to either directly upload, or import from a URl, depending on how their images are accessible. (see The Gallery).

To update a linked attachment:

1. Firstly open the document containing the attachment in ‘Edit’ mode

2. Then double-click on the link to the attachment to reveal the ‘Get Info’ button

3. Click on the ‘Get Info’ button and then the ‘Replace’ button

4. Select the file you wish to replace the currently linked file with.

For RSpace Team and Enterprise, a system admin or RSpace admin will set up your LabGroup, see Creating Groups (for System Admins). For RSpace Community, anyone can create a group, see Creating a New LabGroup.

In a LabGroup, only your own PI can see your work by default. In a Collaboration Group, the other PI(s) can see work that you have explicitly shared with the group.

No, in a collaboration group, only people you actively share with can see your work.

See "Add New Members to a LabGroup" in LabGroups.

See "Leaving or Removing a User from a LabGroup" in LabGroups.

Yes, you can belong to any number of Lab Groups or Collaboration groups.

See Viewing and Organising Shared Group Content, View and Search the Audit Trail.

See Sharing Content.

There are currently three ways to share with external parties:

1. Export the desired file to HTML or PDF, and send it your collaborators via email or other preferred file sharing method. See Export Options and Export Formats.

2. Publish PDF documents within RSpace and share URL. To do this, select a file in the PDF section of the Gallery, and click ‘Publish’. This generates a secure public URL that you can share. Additional authentication is not necessary for RSpace Community or Team users, but Enterprise customers may need to authenticate further if the RSpace server is behind a firewall. See Publishing PDFs & .DOC exports.

3. Export the desired file to any of the repositories supported by RSpace (Dataverse, Figshare etc) by selecting ‘Export’ and then the ‘Repository’ option. See Dataverse Integration, Figshare Integration.

Only the PI or LabAdmin of the LabGroup can delete or rename folders inside the shared folder. You can find more information in Making a User a LabAdmin and Viewing and Organising Shared Group Content.

See Sharing Folder or Gallery Contents.

See "Unsharing or Editing Permissions of a Shared Document" under Sharing Content.

Within RSpace, the default setting is that only you and your PI can see your work. If you are a PI, your data is visible to you alone.

Certain adblockers remove or hide buttons with "share" or "message" on them. Please either disable your adblocker or whitelist https://community.researchspace.com to continue to use these features.

If you are an RSpace Team or Enterprise customer, Inventory is available to you at no extra charge. You should be able to see an "Inventory" tab in RSpace; please contact your RSpace System Administrator to upgrade to the newest RSpace version if the tab is not there.

Please refer to RSpace Inventory Hub for more information.

Inventory is free for Team and Enterprise customers. We will provide information for Community during 2022.

if you are a prospective customer or a Community user, you can get an idea of how Inventory will work by trying out our test instance, which is kept up-to-date with the newest features.

Please refer to RSpace Inventory Hub for more information, and to access the test instance.

See Integrations List & Availability for a full list of integrations and which RSpace editions they are available on.

Yes! See Cloud Storage Integrations (Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive). If you don’t see these buttons, you’ll need to ask your RSpace administrator to enable these services. When you link to data in external files, the links will appear in your document.

Note that in order to use these integrations, you must first enable them in the Apps panel (see Apps Introduction, or Introduction to configuring RSpace Apps for system administrators of Team and Enterprise servers).

As a first step, please check that the integration has been enabled. On RSpace Community, you can enable it yourself (see Apps Introduction); on Team and Enterprise, please ask your sysadmin to enable it.

If the integration is enabled but still does not work, then something's wrong, please contact us with details!

Unfortunately, MS does not provide good APIs that would allow this, so no, we cannot integrate with sharepoint at this time, however, you CAN manually copy the links for items in sharepoint and manually paste them in to RSpace documents.

RSpace takes your data security seriously. All RSpace products use HTTPS to encrypt network connections, and passwords are stored securely. Access to the Community server is only granted to a select number of authorized Research Space employees. We work closely with RSpace Enterprise customers to ensure that RSpace interacts with institutional environments in a secure manner that suits their needs.

Within RSpace, the default setting is that only you and your PI can see your work. If you are a PI, your data is visible to you alone. In exceptional circumstances, authorized RSpace administrators can access accounts, for example to investigate a user query or bug report. Please see our Privacy Policy for more details.

For both regulated labs and unregulated labs, RSpace is a crucial part of you overall compliance, Good Lab Practice, and patent protection strategy. 21CFR11 compliance has become the international “gold standard” for scientific data management and should be considered mandatory for any modern, efficient, paperless lab. The key elements of 21CFR11 that are supported by RSpace are as follows:

- Data is true and accurate record of your work.
- Ability to create accurate copies and human readable exports for inspection.
- Limited, secure, role-based access by authorized individuals only.
- Secure audit trail that records all user actions with computer generated timestamps.
- All changes are visible, older versions remain available for inspection.
- All records remain available in the system for the period of the study (i.e. permanently for most academic labs).
- Training in proper use of the system is available and completed by all users.
- Digital signatures can be used to lock documents and signatures cannot be separated from the data they safeguard.
- Proper password management procedures, system security and access / activity logging are all part of the system.

For the highest level of compliance, you lab procedures will need to be professionally validated in-situ by qualified specialists. Research Space can assist you with every step of this process. For more information about 21CFR11 compliance see: http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/default.htm

Please refer to our Privacy Policy page.

Any content you create in a document or notebook is stored in the RSpace database. Files and images you upload to RSpace are stored unaltered on the RSpace server.  At any time you can export some or all of your data to HTML, PDF or XML format to get all your data out of RSpace (see Export Options).

RSpace Enterprise customers choose whether RSpace is installed on premises, on a cloud they manage, or on a cloud we manage in a location of their choice. RSpace Team customers are deployed on a cloud we manage in a region of their choice. The data their users enter into RSpace is therefore stored in the country or region in which they are located. RSpace Community is deployed on an AWS server we manage in Ireland.

Users of RSpace Enterprise and RSpace Team do not have storage space or upload file size limits, unless their institution decides to configure a limit.

Users of RSpace Community have access to unlimited storage space as well, but there is a 10MB limit on individual uploads.

Yes, we do. You can create, search, share and export content. See our API developer docs for details.

We do not expect any downtime other than when we’re releasing a new version, approximately once every month.  In the event of any unscheduled downtime, you will receive a notification that allows plenty of time for you to save your work and logout before the application is restarted.