Maintaining Research Records: The Laboratory Notebook

The ultimate goal in any biotech research program is usually to publish a paper or apply for a patent, as a way of announcing or commercializing research results. It's easy to forget the details of how experiments were done or what your observations were by the time you get around to writing up your work, unless you've kept accurate and clearly written records in a proper laboratory notebook. To go one step further, a properly maintained notebook can be a vital tool in court, in the case of a dispute over ownership of IP.

In my experience, the laboratory notebook is an often overlooked necessity of a smoothly-operated research program. I’ve made a list of the Top Ten Requirements for Laboratory Notebooks to refresh everyone’s memory of our first-year undergraduate laboratory lessons, where the mandatory criteria for keeping experimental records were routinely drilled into all of us!