E-Notebook's electronic signatures allows you to have a "paperless lab." With E-signatures, a PDF rendition is created and stored in a long-term storage database. You select colleagues as witnesses, and you and your colleagues "sign" the document with your password.

E-Notebook records your lab work in electronic format rather than in paper format. But what about a final lab report? With E-Notebook, you have a choice of electronically signing the final lab report, or printing out a final lab report for "wet signature." The steps for E-signature include:

• When an experiment is completed, you click "Sign and Close". (You may also "Sign and Keep Open", for signatures along the way).
• You select witnesses from your list of colleagues (the number of witnesses required is determined by your institution's rules).
• E-Notebook renders the experiment in PDF format, as if you printed each section in sequence.
  
• The PDF Rendition can be viewed on screen; then printed for wet signature at this point; or saved for e-signature. In either case, the PDF is stored in a separate long-term storage database.
• You sign your experiment by confirming that you have reviewed the document, then entering your password.
• For each witness, the closed experiment appears on their E-Notebook homepage under the heading, "Waiting Documents".
• Documents submitted to witnesses by you appear on your homepage under the heading, "Documents Submitted by [your name]", so you can check on witness' status.
• Once closed, an E-Notebook experiment can be viewed, but not edited. It is marked as closed with a small "lock" symbol.
• Closed experiments can be re-opened, with an explanation, but then must be witnessed again to re-close them.

This feature is available in Desktop E-Notebook, Workgroup E-Notebook, Cloud Computing E-Notebook, and Enterprise E-Notebook. The PDF rendition component requires Adobe Acrobat Pro (not just Adobe Acrobat Reader), which must be purchased separately.