Frequently asked questions

Because "unit" is not a universal measure on a syringe. A U-100 barrel carries 100 marks per millilitre. A U-40 veterinary barrel carries 40. A U-500 barrel carries 500. A tuberculin barrel carries no unit marks at all.

Until you state which barrel you are holding, translating a volume into marked units would be a guess — and a guess in that particular arithmetic is exactly the kind that produces a tenfold error. So VialTome reports physical volume, says why, and waits for you to choose.

Only if you export a file or follow a web link yourself. There is no account, no cloud service, no sync, no telemetry and no analytics. VialTome works fully offline and never contacts a server on its own.

There is exactly one exception, and it only happens when you ask for it: pressing Check for updates reads one published file from this website. It sends no identifier, no usage information, and not even the version you are running — the comparison happens on your machine after the file arrives. There is no check at startup, no timer, and no setting that could turn one on. If you never press the button, VialTome never opens a network connection.

Diagnostic logs record operation names and error text, never record content. The diagnostic information you can copy for a bug report contains version numbers, paths and record counts only.

It is free, permanently, under the MIT licence. No subscription, no premium tier, no locked features, no usage limits, no mandatory registration and no advertisements. Every feature described on this site is available to everyone.

There is an optional donation link on the About page and in the footer here. It unlocks nothing, there are no nag screens, and you will not be asked twice.

Yes. VialTome never assumes a subject is human. Subject kinds include human participants, animals, cell cultures, specimens, samples and in-silico subjects, and the profile fields change accordingly — species and strain for animals, passage for cultures. Routes include laboratory exposure, cell culture and in feed or water alongside the clinical ones.

Nothing. Saved reports store the rendered document, and any historical range is rebuilt from the protocol version that was in effect at the time — not from today's. Revise a protocol three times and last quarter's report still reads correctly.

Protocol versions are immutable. Editing a saved protocol writes a new version with an effective date, an author and a reason; earlier versions are preserved exactly and can be compared side by side.

Because blending them is the most common way research information becomes misleading. A mechanistic argument gets repeated as a finding. A rodent result gets read as a human one. A forum post ends up cited as evidence.

Every claim in VialTome's Knowledge library belongs to exactly one tier, carries its study model, and is displayed with a distinct colour, glyph and border style so the distinction survives greyscale printing and colour-vision differences. Where no evidence was located, the page says so explicitly rather than leaving a blank section.

It is a starting point, not an authority, and it says so on every page. Each article shows the pack version, when it was updated and when its sources were reviewed.

One editorial rule is absolute: identifiers are never invented. Where a DOI, PMID or trial registration has been confirmed it is shown. Where it has not, the source is cited by title and journal with a link to the primary database, and the claim is marked as unverified. Regulatory and anti-doping status carry the date they were checked, because both change.

Verify anything that matters against current primary sources for your own jurisdiction.

Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit) as an installer and an MSI; and 64-bit desktop Linux — Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian and derivatives — as a .deb and a portable archive.

The Linux packages are built from exactly the same source tree as the Windows release and the .deb is structurally verified, but it has not been launched on a Linux machine, because the build host for release 1.1.0 is Windows. The download page says so plainly. An AppImage build script is included for anyone with a Linux machine to hand.

Yes — export a .vialtome bundle. It carries the project and everything attached to it: groups, subjects, protocols and every version, events, measurements, laboratory results, safety records, deviations, inventory, notes, logbooks, saved reports, calculations and the substances it references. Attachments are optional.

Before exporting you can replace identities, remove private notes, investigator notes, photographs, ages and document metadata — and preview exactly what will leave. Import allocates fresh identifiers, so a bundle can be imported alongside the project it came from without collisions.

The database is flushed to disk atomically — written to a temporary file and renamed — so a crash mid-write cannot leave a half-written database. VialTome also takes an automatic backup each time it starts, keeping a rotating set with SHA-256 checksums.

If a database file is ever unreadable, VialTome sets it aside under a timestamped name rather than overwriting it, and starts fresh — so a damaged file is preserved for recovery rather than destroyed.

Yes. The DOCX and XLSX files VialTome writes are standard Office Open XML and open directly in Google Docs and Google Sheets, as well as Word, Excel and LibreOffice.

VialTome deliberately does not write a placeholder .gdoc file — such a file contains no document, only a pointer to one. Uploading into a Google account would require credentials VialTome does not ask for and does not store.

No, and it does not claim to be. VialTome records what you enter and performs deterministic arithmetic on it. Recording an ethics approval number stores that number; it does not create compliance with any regulatory standard.

The group assignment tools produce reproducible, seeded, auditable allocations for research organisation. They have not been formally validated as randomisation software for a regulated trial — if your study requires validated allocation, use a system that has been.

Press F1 in the application for built-in help covering every module, or read the documentation here.

For a problem, open Settings → Diagnostics and choose Copy. The copied text contains version numbers, paths and record counts — never project, subject or protocol content — so it is safe to send.