The NFDI4Chem electronic laboratory notebook standard has been awarded the title of ‘Best Scientific Software’.
Our open-source software, Chemotion ELN, has won this year’s Helmholtz Software Award. The electronic laboratory notebook for chemistry and related sciences was awarded the main prize, worth 5,000 euros, in the ‘Best Scientific Software’ category. Dr Nicole Jung (KIT) accepted the award on behalf of the development team.
Chemotion ELN: From laboratory notebook to a FAIR dataset
Chemotion ELN is an open-source electronic laboratory notebook that enables researchers to plan, document and evaluate experiments. The software maps reactions and analyses, supports structural representation and integrates external databases. Data can be transferred directly from the ELN to repositories and made publicly available there. The LabIMotion extension makes the system usable for other disciplines as well. “This award is a great honour for the entire Chemotion team and for the many people in the community who drive the software forward with their ideas and experience. We want to continue developing Chemotion so that we can provide researchers with efficient digitalisation tools for their day-to-day work. We want to ensure that research data can be documented in accordance with the FAIR principles right from the start,” said Dr Jung. Development began in Prof. Stefan Bräse’s research group at KIT. Today, Chemotion is the benchmark for electronic laboratory notebooks within NFDI4Chem.
Dr Nicole Jung from the Chemotion team at KIT (third from the left) accepts the award alongside the other prize-winners.
The Award
The Helmholtz Software Award recognises the importance of research software in science and the achievements of the people who develop it. It is presented jointly by HIFIS (Helmholtz Federated IT Services), the Helmholtz Open Science Office, the Joint Lab HiRSE (Helmholtz Information – Research Software Engineering) and the Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy (HIDA). It is awarded in three categories: ‘Best Scientific Software’, ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Newcomer’. The winners are selected by an international jury of experts and subsequently by an assessment committee comprising, amongst others, experts from all Helmholtz research areas. Alongside Chemotion, the software ASPECT (Sustainability Prize) and TrixiParticles (Newcomer Prize) were honoured in 2026.
Further information
- Helmholtz Software Award: https://os.helmholtz.de/open-research-software/helmholtz-software-award/
- Chemotion: https://chemotion.net
- NFDI4Chem: https://nfdi4chem.de
