Open Lab Notebooks
In recent years, lab notebooks kept online have started to become as transparent to the world as they are to the researcher keeping them, a trend often referred to as Open Notebook Science, after the title of a 2006 blogpost by chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. The term is frequently used to distinguish this aspect of Open Science from the related but rather independent developments commonly labeled as Open Source, Open Access, Open Data and so forth. The openness of the notebook, then, specifically refers to the set of the following points, or elements thereof:
- Sharing of the researcher's laboratory notebook online in real time without password protection or limitations on the use of the data.
- The raw data used by the researcher to derive observations and conclusions are made available online to anyone.
- All experimental data are shared, including failed or ambiguous attempts.
- Feedback and other contributions to the research effort can be integrated easily with the understanding that everything is donated to the public domain.
The use of a wiki makes it convenient to track contributions by individual authors.
Read more about this topic: Lab Notebook
Famous quotes containing the words open and/or notebooks:
“It’s fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks ... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries.... Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don’t bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)