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:
“Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which any thing more than an approximate solution can be had? Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The first duty of a lecturer—to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantlepiece for ever.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)