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15 Laboratory Notebook Tips to Help with your Research Manuscript

Your lab notebook is a foundation to your research manuscript. It serves almost as a rudimentary draft of your research story. A well-kept laboratory notebook not only leads to effective reporting but it also reduces headache.

In the beginning, when first keeping a lab notebook, there can be a lot of trial and error. However, by incorporating these tips at the get-go will minimize the error portion.

Why keeping a formal laboratory notebook is important

Detailed notes are the only way to keep track of what you did and how you did it. Furthermore, the formal nature of the laboratory notebook ensures certain records are always made and that they’re made the same way. These standards are deemed necessary by your organization in order to ensure scientific conduct and reproducibility.

Beyond that, however, are several other reasons a formal record is crucial (Hunter & Hughey, 2007):

• Promotes accurate collaboration.
• Promotes reproducibility not just for other researchers but for yourself as well.
• Maintains the reasoning behind your experimental flow.
• Serves as the building blocks of your research paper’s methods, results and conclusion.
• Serves as a log of all observations and anomalies.
• Becomes a helpful troubleshooting tool.
• Allows you to answer specific experimental questions.
• Can help defend your intellectual property, particularly when it comes to patents.

When a lab notebook isn’t properly organized or maintained, you’ll find yourself scrambling to figure out what sample went into the 4 th lane of your gel, or why you ran a PCR for the specific primers you chose, or did you run an ELISA – you remember running that ELISA, but you can’t remember when or find the paper towel you wrote the details on (yes a paper towel – bad habits must be broken quickly).

1. Avoid bad notebook habits

It is very easy to form bad habits when keeping a lab notebook. Some of these habits stem from simply not knowing a better way. Other bad habits are formed from poor examples, poor guidelines or poor time management.

In any case, it’s easy to break bad notebook habits by first recognizing a few examples of them.

• Avoid the chore mentality of lab notebook entries. The notebook is sacred .
• Avoid pencils. Use pens (better yet, waterproof pens)
• Avoid scribbling out mistakes. Draw a clear line through a mistake instead. Mistakes are helpful research tools.
• Avoid post-it notes and scrap paper for informal notetaking.
• Avoid cursive. Write in print. Remember, your lab notebook is also a reference to others, which will need easily read by others.
• Don’t get out of a routine. Delaying your entries will cause a major backlog.
• Don’t forget dates and page numbers.

2. Get familiar with your institution’s preferred structuring.

Different organizations have different requirements for how to maintain and organize your lab notebook. For instance, some universities might require the date, page number and the purpose of your entry followed by the methods used and results observed.

When you get started with yours, find out from your principal investigator what their preferences are and look up the standard’s on your institution’s website.

3. Make use of a secondary, unofficial notebook

This third tip comes with caution. Some will regard this as a bad lab practice, so it’s up to your needs and your organization’s requirements.

Due to the formal nature of the official lab notebook and its methodical entry approach, writing well and neatly as you go along can be challenging. Sometimes, this is how the bad habit of writing things on post-it notes or scrap paper with the hopes of future transcription develops.

Instead, use a secondary bound notebook as an informal write-up of your procedures and observations. You can use your secondary notebook in any way that suits you, but the benefit is that it’s an informal place to quickly jot down what you’re doing as you do it. Some people use it to quickly write in any notes about a PCR they’re running, what specific materials they’re using or any specific calculations. You might also enter observations.

If you do this, it’s important to be extremely disciplined in your approach. Everything you enter in your secondary notebook will still need to be entered into your official lab notebook. These entries; however, are going to be written more structured, with neater handwriting and more depth.

When keeping a secondary notebook, there are some things to keep in mind:

• Always date your entries.
• Always head the entry with the same title in your official notebook so that you remember what your informal entries pertained to.
• Transfer the information over daily.
• While your handwriting might not be as neat, be certain you’ll be able to recognize what you wrote a few hours later.

4. Create a wider margin in the pages of your lab notebook for rough documentation and notes.

If you cannot keep a secondary notebook, you might be able to either keep a notes section within each entry, or draw a vertical line down the page, expanding the margin for notes.

Keep in mind, whatever you jot down must be transferred over to the structured portion of your lab notebook in a timely manner. Furthermore, this section can easily get out of hand and feel cluttered depending on how much room you give yourself. Be sure to date each entry, even time stamp it so when you refer back to those notes, you know when you took them and why.

5. Use OMRAD (objective, methods, results and discussion) for your lab notebook structure

One of the challenges of keeping a laboratory notebook is knowing what information to include.

While the advice is to be overly detailed, this can still feel broad. However, if you adhere to a strict OMRAD structure (objective, materials/methods, results and discussion) you’ll already be including a lot of important details.

This advice can still be a little broad seeming, so let’s dive in a little deeper.

• Objective : Here you’re writing the purpose of this procedure. Why are you doing it? What should the outcome be? Why did you choose the method you chose?
• Materials/Methods: Be very detailed here. Include information about the reagents used, including concentrations, volumes and why they were selected (when this is relevant). For the methods, detail what protocols were used and why they were used. If you tailored the protocol, be sure to include the original specifications along with the changes made, and provide information about why you made those changes.

Don’t forget to include very detailed components about your experimental setup such as how many lanes were ran, what samples went into each lane or each tube, what strains were used and why, etc.

What, why and how much are key elements of information in this section.

Additionally, it’s recommended you include any unusual details during your procedure. For instance, you weren’t able to use your personal pipettes or you ran your experiment on a different machine from what you’ve been used to. Or the lab’s temperature was unusually cold. Or perhaps you modified the protocol you were using.These little details will help you troubleshoot if a problem arises, and they also lend to the idea of experimental reproducibility.

Here is a brief list of some things to include in your materials and methods section, and remember to always have detail about why you used each approach when it’s pertinent.

• Results: Here, you’re going to include the objective data. This could be in the form of tables, charts, photos, etc. When using images, you’ll want your pictures clearly labeled. For instance, the samples used in each lane or tube and what the results were. Being detailed about this information will help you later recall how you analyzed your information or why you moved on to the following step.
• Discussion: Summarize your results and its impact in the discussion section (Heroux, n.d.) . This will later become a great tool as you approach your research manuscript.

Include detailed observations in your results section. Some organizations might require your notebook to have an observations section.

In this section you’ll evaluate the results, and explain why you analyzed it the way you did. You’ll also explain whether it accomplished your research objectives, and how and why it did.

The discussion section also paves the way for your next experimental step. Based on the results and their meaning the next logical step is this…

It’s possible that another research question has arisen given the information. The discussion section is your place to detail this as a way of introducing your next step.

Remember that mistakes and failures are also equally important. Perhaps you did a colony screening, but you got no results. You can use the discussion section to explain why you think this happened and what you intend to do next to solve to test this. For example, this might warrant the use of a different antibiotic.

6. Ask your PI for advice

Your PI might provide you with the general standards for keeping your laboratory notebook, but you might want to take a moment to ask specific questions. For instance, if he or she does inspections, what are they looking for? What characteristics have they noticed that lead to good notebook keeping? Can you keep a secondary notebook for scratch work and notes? If not, can you allocate a portion of each notebook entry for informal note taking? Find out if you can include more information beyond what is outlined by your lab’s policy.

7. Schedule time each day for your lab notebook

Some labs might have strict notebook checks, others might not. When strict checks and signoffs aren’t happening, it is easy to fall out of a routine.

There is another hurtle, especially when there is no oversight – it’s easy to get so caught up in the doing that you can’t find time for the writing .

To overcome these obstacles, the best thing to do is to block out a specific time dedicated to daily cleanup and entries in your laboratory notebook.

If you used a secondary notebook for scratch work, it’s time to formalize your day’s entry. If you have an expanded margin with notes, use that time block to organize information into the formal area of your notebook.

This is also a good time to tape in your printed protocols or images of results and clearly write descriptions about these components.

When you have a time block, be strict about this period. When this routine gets broken just once, it’s easy for it to get broken again.

8. Schedule time for review

Reviewing your notes regularly can help you draw better conclusions about your research. It is recommended that you build review time into the same time block as your lab notebook upkeep.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t hurt to hold a weekly review of your lab notebook and notes, especially as you move into other stages of your research.

One of the reasons a regular weekly checkup can help your lab notebook is because a second look can improve comprehension. You might realize that you’re neglecting a very vital piece of information in your regular notebook management. From this review, you now know to include it. The review may help you with an experimental hurtle, or help you think about your experiment in different ways.

9. You can tape and paste typed information

It can get tedious writing down the same experimental steps over and over, but including this information within each entry is extremely important because it allows you to also document any changes made or special circumstances or observations that occurred during the procedure.

Since writing the same steps down over and over will give you a severe hand-cramp, some institutions allow you to print out and tape or glue typed-information into your notebook.

Therefore, if you’re working with the same protocol every day, print out extra copies. Tape it in your notebook and pen-in any changes as you go along. Double-sided tape can also make this task easier.

The same can be said for tables and figures you need to include. Sometimes it’s easier and neater if you have a typed version.

Most institutions will require you to date stamp the printed paper, and this is just good lab practice anyway.

10. Write information down as you go along

Some places will require you to make your notes as you go along, but not all places. Even still, this is a good practice.

One of the biggest benefits to writing everything down as you go along is you will become aware of any issues or missed steps. If your experiment didn’t go as expected, now you have the answer about why.

11. Track your failures and mistakes

The idea of recording your mistakes and failures seems scary, especially when you factor in the cost of reagents.

Despite how frightening it can be to be responsible for waste and get something wrong, record of this information serves as a learning tool . Just the act of writing down that you forgot to add your primers, will make you more careful about that step in the future.

This record will also allow you to see and improve on any procedural weaknesses.

12. Confidently answer these questions with the information in your lab notebook

According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Mechanical Engineering’s lab notebook requirement , you’re keeping a good lab notebook if you can answer these questions:

• “Can someone else, with an equivalent technical background to your own, use your notebook to repeat your work, and obtain the same results?”
• “Could you come back six months later, read your notes and make sense of them?”

Furthermore, the information recorded should be detailed enough to allow you to also answer these questions:

• Would my reasoning for choosing this experiment justify my methodology to anyone else reading this lab notebook?
• Could you come back in six months and understand why you got the results you got or analyzed the results the way you did?
• Could you come back in six months and fully understand your experimental setup?

13. Keep your research manuscript in mind

Your lab notebook is going to be foundational to your manuscript’s materials and methods, results and discussion sections.

The information you record is going to allow you to flip through and understand what you did, why you did it and how it turned out.

If this is your first research paper or presentation, anticipating exactly what you need before approaching the major writing step is going to be challenging. However, there are some fundamental elements to consider.

• What is my overall research objective?
• What procedures are recorded in my lab notebook that helped me solve this problem?
• Why were those procedures chosen?
• In what order were they conducted?
• Were there any odd observations or special circumstances relevant to the overall results?
• What products and how much did I use?
• What statistical calculations relevant to my paper were used and why?
• What software programs were used, and why?
• What were my observations and results?
• What was the impact of this research?
• What did this answer, and what is left unanswered?

This list could easily grow, but these are at least the initial considerations to help you connect your lab notebook to your research manuscript or presentation.

14. Keep other researchers in mind

Imagine getting to a new lab, and the PI hands you a stack of lab notebooks and says, “Everything you need to know about the project is in here.”

If the notebooks are well-organized, going through them and making sense of them should be relatively easy. But if the notebooks were illegible, poorly structured and poorly detailed, they will be almost useless.

Therefore, when you are approaching your own laboratory notebook, consider future researchers . Give them all the information you would have wanted yourself. Anticipate questions and answer them.

Always make sure if another researcher had your handbook as a manual, they would be able to reproduce exactly the same experiment and get exactly the same result.

If this tip needs to be a little more self-serving, consider collaborators and consultants who might need to refer to your notebooks to work with you. It’s in both of your interests to maintain extremely detailed information.

If that’s not enough, consider yourself the future researcher who might need your lab notebooks. Have you ever reviewed your college notes for a final exam and found some sections impossible to read or missing that one thing the professor said . Future you is also a researcher to keep in mind. Give yourself every tool available for success.

15. Leave extra spaces for routine sections and things you’ve missed.

Because a lab notebook has structure requirements, you might find yourself out of space when you realize you’ve left something out or had more to write than expected.

Anticipate these situations and leave yourself extra room to go back and fill in observations and data you might be waiting on.

In a situation where you didn’t leave yourself enough room, if your institution permits it, include a sort of appendix at the end of each of your entries where these observations and notes can be entered. Make sure to head them appropriately. For instance, if your addition corresponds to your materials section, label the supplemental entry “supplemental materials and methods.” At the bottom of your actual materials section, you might indicate where the supplemental entry can be found “ see page 64 for supplemental materials entry .”

• Your lab notebook is a primary source for your research manuscripts and presentations.
• Regular maintenance and strong record keeping enables your lab notebook to be a valuable manuscript resource.
• Consider the needs of your ultimate research objective and your manuscript when making notebook entries.
• Notebooks not only allow other researchers to accurately replicate your experiment, they also allow you to.
• Excellent record keeping allows your lab notebook to be a useful troubleshooting tool.

Caprette, D. R. (n.d.). Guidelines for Keeping a Laboratory Record. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bioslabs/tools/notebook/...

Grassie, L. (2020, January 16). 10 Tips For Organizing Your Lab Book. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://bitesizebio.com/11068/10-tips-for-organizi...

Heroux, K. (n.d.). How to Turn a Lab Notebook into an Academic Manuscript. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.aje.com/arc/how-turn-lab-notebook-acad...

Hunter, I. W., & Hughey, B. J. (2007, June 5). MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF ... Retrieved May 11, 2020, from http://web.mit.edu/me-ugoffice/communication/labno...

Knox, J. (n.d.). How to use the laboratory notebook correctly. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from http://ainslielab.web.unc.edu/files/2016/06/Lab_No...

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Chemistry Lab Resources (for CHM 1XX and 2XX Labs)

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Sample Lab Notebook Pages

• Sample Lab Report #1 In this version, the procedure is written out and then followed by the data and observations. [Courtesy Univ. of Colorado]
• Sample Lab Notebook #2 In this version, the procedure and the data & observations are presented in a two-column table, so that an observation can be placed directly to the right of the corresponding step in the procedure. [Courtesy Univ. New Mexico]

General Tips

In scientific research, the lab notebook is often considered a legal document, such as for the purposes of patents or to meet FDA guidelines for drug research.  Therefore it is important to start good habits that will make your notebook as efficient and accurate as possible.  Some more commone tips include:

• Use permanent ink
• Initial and date every page
• Leave a blank page or two at the beginning of your notebook so you can create a Table of Contents
• Draw only a single line through all errors written, so they still can be seen
• Create a table of important chemicals and their relevant properties at the beginning of each experiment
• Record what you have done, not what your lab manual says
• Record all observations and explanations of why they happened
• Be as descriptive as possible with titles and headings for your experiments; for example do not write "Chemical Synthesis," instead write "Preparation of Alum"
• Cross out all blank space at the bottom of the last page of each experiment; start a new page for each experiment
• At the end of each lab, ask yourself, "Can I recreate this experiment/my results with what I have written down?"

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Laboratory fundamentals in biological engineering, guidelines for maintaining your lab notebook.

Lab notebooks are kept to document and organize your experimental plans and data. Every lab requires each researcher to keep one. Yet no two scientists organize their lab notebooks identically, and there isn’t one “right” way for you to keep yours. There are some common elements that all lab notebooks share and some important habits you should develop in keeping your notebook for this class. All lab notebooks should be…

1. Complete

Your notebook is a place to collect descriptions of experimental goals, experimental procedures, all the data you collect, and your interpretations of results. Numerical data and calculations should be written directly into your notebook, not on scraps of paper to be entered later. Data in the form of a photo should be taped into your notebook. Printouts and X-ray films can also be taped into your notebook or if reams of paper and large films are being collected, they can be organized in a separate binder and referenced in your notebook.

2. Organized

Some scientists arrange their notebooks by date, others by the question being tested. What works best depends on the research itself and the researcher. Since this class has four experimental modules that are performed sequentially, your notebook will, by default, be organized by both date and project. You will keep a record of every lab meeting, including both the date and the module/day in your notebook.

3. Up to Date

For this class, that means coming to lab with the date, module/day, title, purpose, and description already entered in your notebook. It will occasionally be helpful to have data tables ready or some calculations performed as well. “Up to date” also means leaving lab with your protocol and any amendments you made to it, data, and perhaps some interpretation entered in your notebooks. Your notebook does not need a table of contents, but you should realize that most research notebooks do.

4. Permanent

Use pen when you write in your notebooks.

Some Other Things You Should Know About Lab Notebooks

• They are the property of the research lab itself. Researchers who join the lab after you have left it will get to know you through the notebooks you have kept there. Ideally, your notebooks will reflect your most organized, clear and thoughtful side.
• They are legal documents. Labs in industry have special rules about lab notebooks since patent disputes and court cases often hinge on lab notebook entries.
• They are both personal and public. It is considered impolite and an invasion of privacy to read someone else’s notebook without their permission. Most people are happy to show you their notebooks when asked.

Grading your Notebook

Teaching assistants will collect the duplicate copy of your notebook pages and evaluate them as follows:

Things to Remember

Remember the goal of your notebook is to help you repeat your experiments with the same results. Information you should record includes:

• Centrifuge settings: temperature, speed, time
• Incubator settings: temperature, time, and shaking speed if applicable
• Size and types of tubes used
• Buffers (and their pH)
• Dilutions and how they were prepared
• Concentrations
• Volumes used
• Washes: number, volumes, temperature, solutions used
• Antibody: dilutions, lot or tube #s
• Electrophoresis: agarose or acrylamide percentages, voltages, times
• The names of people who helped you with your experiment

You should also note any changes to the protocol such as:

• unexpected delays (“waterbath wasn’t ready so tubes kept on ice for one hour”)
• unanticipated conditions (“roller drum found off in AM”)
• unusual observations (“a large number of cells seemed to be floating”).

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How to Keep a Lab Notebook

Keeping a lab notebook to accompany activities in the lab, from making changes in protocols or simply for brainstorming ideas, is essential good practice for any scientist. From Ph.D. students to postdocs – even those working in industry R&D – the humble lab book serves as a legally valid record of intellectual property, and a handy ledger for any other techniques developed during research. However, like any practice in the lab, there are some general rules that are necessary for maintaining the legitimacy of your lab notebook. Here is a quick rundown on lab book layout, examples of format and other lab book guidelines for how it should be structured.

How to keep a lab notebook

General lab notebook setup, how to write in a lab notebook, lab book guidelines for content, labfolder’s electronic lab notebook.

As a general rule, it must be impossible to tear any pages out from the book without leaving evidence. So a ring-bound document won’t do. Pages should also be numbered, if they aren’t already, with a couple of pages saved at the beginning of a lab notebook table of contents.

Next, you need to do the following:

• Clearly label your lab notebook on the front cover with your name, lab or institution contact number and your work email, project name, supervisor and course or department. Then make a copy of these details on the first page or inside the front cover.
• It may be useful when writing the lab notebook to only use the left or right page, leaving the opposite side for rough notes or space to paste print-outs. These can always be voided later.
• If there isn’t space already reserved at the bottom of each page, reserve a section for a colleague or supervisor to date and sign your work after each entry.

To start, the basic lab notebook format starts a fresh page for each new experiment. There should be no gaps or white spaces between or within entries and data is entered as it is produced (real-time). Entries should also be dated chronologically, include a quick list of the names of any other participants that were involved in the experiment and lastly be written in permanent ink (not pencil!). Using a Ball-point pen is also recommended, as the indentations serve as a more obvious trace – and may be useful for carbon copy tear-outs based books.

Additionally:

• If you do end up with any gaps on the backs of pages or between entries, cross them out to void them, so it’s not possible for anyone else to enter information later.
• Making sure when you write a lab journal that any additional diagrams, side notes, and tables are labeled clearly and that these can be cross-referenced to the corresponding lab notebook page. This produces a seamless record and helps avoid the need to write out full protocols again and again.
• If any of these additional materials are digital, a USB or data chip should be secured inside the cover. Digital entries should also be stored in chronological order.
• Keep dates and page numbers consistent, and beware of any ambiguous formatting (e.g., European versus US order of writing month and day, decimal points).

Lab notebook example:

“Connected Researchers” http://connectedresearchers.com/electronic-lab-notebooks-and-the-future-of-science-discussed-at-labfolder-workshop/

The general idea is that someone can pick up your notebook and easily follow any protocols which you may have developed or observations and calculations you’ve made to achieve your results. This works towards improving the reproducibility of your research and solidifies its value as a legal record of any IP you may develop.

• Having a detailed title of the experiment and a quick objective as to what you were doing that day helps as a reference should you need to go back on yourself.
• It includes lists of materials: There are hundreds of different mediums that can be used for cultures, so listing catalog numbers and names could help save time later.
• Include all details of instruments you used: settings, manufacturer and other calibration or positioning tips you may have employed. Remember, reproducibility is paramount and these seemingly insignificant details may be the key for troubleshooting later.
• Printouts of images – particularly for histology work – helps when describing morphology. But again, these must should labelled carefully with date, time and sample numbers.

This may also seem obvious, but since your lab notebook needs to be the first record of any results you make (no jotting them down on scraps of paper to enter into your book later) it’s worth remembering that you should think carefully before writing in your paper lab notebook.

Let’s face it, it is kind of unusual that you would still need a guide on how to write a lab journal or find yourself looking for a lab notebook template to ensure you use the proper format. These manual tasks are highly cumbersome and in most working environments outside of the research field, are already digitized and automated. With labfolder’s electronic lab notebook (ELN), many of these tasks aren’t necessary. An ELN replaces a paper-based data entry system with a digital record for who, what, where and when, and this can be cloud based.

• With labfolder’s ELN, data can be automatically structured. Unit conversion is also automatic – and searchable. For example, if you have one data entry written in microliter (μl), and the same data point written in milliliter (ml) elsewhere, both entries will appear in search results.
• Entries can be edited and corrected, with an automatic edit and version history of any changes made for integrity. With labfolder’s Material Database (MDB) functionality, materials are recorded digitally with custom fields, including how they were used and which version for each experiment. The team can also be notified when an item is out of stock, as it is an unlimited inventory which updates in real-time. Access to the MDB can also be customised, for private or restricted access to inventory lists.
• Using an ELN also all allows images to be uploaded directly to each entry, for a reliable and reproducible photo record.

This will mean knowing how to keep a good lab notebook will be much more intuitive, and not a case of time wasting damage control when it comes to writing up your results.

Thinking of switching paper for digital? Navigating through all the ELN options can be tricky, so check out our Comprehensive Buyers’ guide to the Electronic Lab Notebook to discern which would be best for your needs.

Curious to see labfolder in action? You can sign up for free and try the features for yourself.

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CH 1010: Chemical Properties, Bonding, and Forces: Lab Notebooks, Techniques & Protocols

• Introduction
• Evaluating Sources
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Organizing Your Lab Notebook

General Guidelines

• Use only a bound notebook and always write directly into your lab notebook. Do not write on separate scraps of paper to be added later. This means making sure you always have your notebook when you are in lab.
• Write legibly using black permanent ink only . Do not use pencil. Ball-point pens are recommended as they do not smear as easily.
• Correct mistakes by drawing a single line through  the error. Do not erase, white-out, or scribble out mistakes. Do not remove pages from your notebook.
• Include a table of contents at the front of the notebook. Either use the inside flap or the first couple of pages to accommodate a TOC.
• Use only the front side of each page. Do not write on the back of each page.
• If you are required to write what you plan to do in advance, write a summary of the procedure steps in your own words.   It is not necessary to rewrite every little detail from the lab manual.
• Use past tense and write in 3 rd person to describe what you did . Your entries should indicate what you did in the past, not what you plan to do.
• You can set up your lab notebook for an experiment ahead of lab, but be sure to record ALL EXPERIMENTAL details in the notebook DURING the time you are in lab. Do not wait to record information after the lab.
• Record what you actually did in lab. Do not simply copy your lab manual. It is especially important to make note of anything you do that is different or in addition to your lab manual instructions, such as using different amounts of a substance or doing things in a different order.
• Include all observations and measurements in your lab notebook. Always include units of measurement. These notes should include if a substance changed colors, if a reaction produced bubbles, if a process took longer than expected, the weights/volumes of substances used, etc.
• Be as detailed and descriptive as possible in all observations as well as titles and headings. For example use  "Preparation of Alum" rather than "Chemical Synthesis”
• At the end of each lab, ask yourself, "Can I recreate this experiment/my results with what I have written down?"

General Page Structure:

• Experiment Title
• If you are continuing from the previous page, write “continued from p. #”
• Page number (if the notebook is not labeled with page numbers)
• Cross out all blank space at the bottom of the last page of each experiment; start a new page for each experiment
• Sample Lab Notebook Page Annotated example of a chemistry lab notebook page

Web Sources

Lab Technique Videos from MIT

Videos for various techniques commonly used in a chemistry lab such as titration, filtration, using a pipet, refluxing a reaction, performing a reaction work-up, etc.

ACS Center for Lab Safety

This American Chemical Society site has various resources about lab safety. 

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The Laboratory Notebook

The laboratory notebook 1,2,3.

Authors: B. D. Lamp, D. L. McCurdy, A. E. Moody, M. C. Nagan and J. M. McCormick

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Intellectual Property Statement and Disclaimer

Introduction

The laboratory notebook is perhaps the single most important piece of laboratory equipment. A scientist’s notebook may be directly entered as evidence in court, and as such may be worth millions to a company in patent litigation. While you may never be in a situation where your notebook is worth a million dollars, good record keeping is essential in all scientific research. In an academic laboratory, the consequences of poor record keeping are wasted time as you repeat the experiment, or simply failing the exercise. In an industrial laboratory, inadequate lab records ultimately cost the company money, either in the cost of time and materials or as the result of legal action. In either case, the cost to the responsible employee is their job and all possible future employment. Thus, adequate record keeping will be stressed in all chemistry laboratories at Truman.

There are many different sets of rules for keeping a laboratory notebook, 3 which range from the very elaborate rules followed by industrial chemists to the simplified rules listed below. Not all of the points given here will apply to all courses; your instructor will point out modifications to these procedures in his or her syllabus or in the laboratory. No matter what guidelines you use, the goal is to produce a record of a scientific endeavor that is understandable to a knowledgeable reader and which can be used to repeat the experiment and, presumably, get the same results.

Notebook Format and Rules

Laboratory records are to be kept in a bound notebook (i. e., secured with glue), not a spiral notebook or a loose-leaf binder. The pages are to be consecutively numbered. No pages are ever to be removed (except for the copies produced by duplicating notebooks).

All entries are to be made directly in the notebook in black or blue ink. Everything related to the laboratory work must be recorded in the notebook in an organized and neat manner (if it cannot be easily read, it is not adequately recorded). It is critical that the material is intelligible and understandable to the notebook author and any trained chemist who reads the records, attempts to reproduce these results, or endeavors to finish an incomplete analysis. This concept is often known as “traceable” in the industrial world.

It is unacceptable under all circumstances to rewrite (or “copy over”) an experiment in the notebook outside of lab. It is also unacceptable to type up portions of the laboratory notebook in a word processor and then attach the printout to your notebook. Plan your activities in the laboratory so that all information is properly entered into the notebook while you are in the laboratory.

Include in the notebook a complete description of the work performed, all reference materials consulted, and ideas that you have related to the work. There should be no loose scraps of paper in the notebook. Graphs, charts, spectra, or spreadsheet analyses should be affixed to the pages of the notebook with tape or glue (to both the original and duplicate pages of duplicating notebooks). Label the space where this material is to go with a description of the item and the results it contained. This way, if it is removed, there will be a record of it. Make no notes on the inserted material.

On the first page of your notebook are written the name of the class, your laboratory section and your name. It is also a good idea to put contact information (e. g., your phone number or email address) here, in case your notebook is lost. The next two pages are reserved for a table of contents (some notebooks come with a table of contents section on the inside front cover, or as a separate, removable sheet; these should not be used). The words “Table of Contents” are to be written at the top of these pages. The first entry is to be the table of contents itself. An entry is made in the Table of Contents for each experiment when it is begun.  This entry includes the title of each experiment and the page number on which the experiment begins.

You may wish to dedicate one page to a “Preface” in which you describe yourself and the contents of the notebook. Another item that is sometimes included is a page titled “Abbreviations and Other Useful Information”.  These items must be completed before  the first laboratory session.

If you are using a non-duplicating notebook, one usually uses only the right side pages. The left pages are reserved for minor calculations, notes of no consequence to the experiment and notes that refer to material found elsewhere in the notebook. In academic laboratories, especially in teaching laboratories, this rule is relaxed as a cost-saving measure for the student.  Please check with your instructor on which protocol he/she wishes you to use.

If a page is skipped, a large “X” must be drawn across it.  The page is then initialed and dated. While generally frowned upon, you may skip a line as needed to separate sections. There should be no unused empty space on a page, except for the printed margins. Treat large blocks of blank space like a blank page (this assures the reader that no information was added later).

At the top of each page write the title of the experiment that matches that in the table of contents. At the bottom of the page place the date that the last entry was made on that page, your printed name and signature (or initials).

If an error is made, draw a single bold horizontal line through the error so that it can still be read. Write the correct information to the right of the incorrect entry and have a short accompanying explanation of the reason for exclusion. Never use whiteout or completely obliterate the incorrect entry.

Do not copy any information from the notebooks of former or current students.  The only exception is when working in a group, and only one member of the group recorded the data during the experiment. In this case, you must indicate in your notebook that the results were copied from the other person’s notebook. Write the recorder’s name and the page number from which the data were copied next to the copied data.

In general, the notebook should be arranged in chronological order, so that when one experiment ends the next one begins. In an undergraduate laboratory this is very easy to do, but as you progress in your study of chemistry, things are not always so well-ordered. If you must start a new experiment before another is finished, you simply note on the last page of the unfinished experiment the page on which it will be continued.

Arrangement of an Experiment in the Notebook

Each experiment’s record includes the following sections: Title , Statement of Purpose , Background , Procedural Outline , Results , Calculations , Discussion of Conclusions and Error Analysis , and Summary of Results . Each section should be clearly labeled with the underlined words indicated below. Sign and date each page as it is completed. The Title , Statement of Purpose , Background and Procedural Outline sections must be prepared  prior to the laboratory period (click here for a checklist of what to do before lab). 

Title : This should include the experiment’s title, your name, the name(s) of your lab partner(s), and the date the experiment was begun.

Statement of Purpose : Clearly and concisely (two or three complete sentences) describe the purpose of the experiment, including the general method that will be used and anticipated results. Do not begin a Statement of Purpose with the phrase “The purpose of this lab is to. .”. Don’t resort to stock phrases; be somewhat creative. The pedagogical purpose of an exercise is not the same as the Statement of Purpose . For the “Determination of Density” exercise, the pedagogical purpose is to learn about precision and accuracy, and the statistical treatment of data. But your statement of purpose might read “The density of a copper block will be determined by two methods: (1) from its dimensions and mass, adn (2) from its mass and volume, as measured by water displacement.”

Background : This section contains more information on the goals of the experiment, the methods used and the procedure followed. The content of the Background section varies with the type of experiment being performed and the requirements of each laboratory course. Check with your instructor about what to include, but in general the Background section must include:

Procedural Outline : This section is a brief (this section should not be more than one or two pages long, at most), but complete, description of the steps taken to carry out the experiment. It is not a rewrite of the source material (e. g., laboratory manual, textbook or journal article); use your own words, You may use a bulleted list for the steps. At your instructor’s discretion, you may not be allowed to bring the source material to the laboratory. So, be sure that your procedure is complete.

Before beginning the Procedural Outline , divide the pages that will contain the procedure into two parts by drawing a vertical line on the page, approximately 3/5 of the way across the page from the left-hand margin (many notebooks already have this line drawn for you). Record the procedure on the left-hand side, and any modifications or procedural notes on the right-hand side.  You do not record your results on the right-hand side!   Results are recorded in the Results section.

Read the experimental section for the exercise before recording any part of the procedural outline in your notebook. This will make writing the outline much easier and minimize errors. As you read, think through the manipulations that are required and re-read sections that indicate particularly hazardous or important steps (usually denoted by “ CAUTION! “). Once you are sure of what you are going to do, go back and write out a step-by-step procedure in your notebook.

Results : This section does not need to be completed before you come to the lab, but you may want to prepare blank tables for recording data. Include in this section a listing of the reduced data (e. g., tables), all graphs, spreadsheet results, and spectra. Unlike the Procedural Outline , this and all following sections may use the entire right-hand page. A common error is to forget to leave space for the graphs (a hand-drawn graph should take up most, if not all, of the page so as to maximize the results’ precision) and other items (e. g., spreadsheet output) that will be prepared as part of the exercise.

All data should be recorded in this section in chronological order. Include all measurements made (with proper units and correct number of significant figures) and any important observations noted when performing the work. When observations are recorded in the laboratory notebook, they are always written in the passive past tense. So instead of “I saw the solution turn green”, one writes, “The solution turned green”. In general, personal pronouns (e. g., “I,” “we”) are not used in scientific writing (the overuse of personal pronouns is taken as a sign of arrogance and the passive is thought to sound more objective). The observations are always written in complete sentences.

When possible, set up tables for repetitive data before coming to the lab. Thinking carefully about the data that will be taken should allow you to prepare a data table, which, although difficult to accomplish for the first few experiments, will save time and space in your lab notebook. The use of tables will make it much easier for the reader to assess your methods and results.

Information on the chemicals and instruments used in the experiment are also included in the Results . For a chemical, the name of its manufacturer, its purity, and the lot number of the chemical are recorded, if this information is available (look the bottle’s label).  It is easiest to record this information when a chemical is first mentioned.  For example, “A saline solution was prepared by dissolving 5.00 g NaCl (99.999%, Aldrich, Lot # 56390-BX) in 500 mL of distilled water.” The identity of all instruments used must be recorded, preferably including serial number, model, manufacturer, and any information on the calibration or settings used. Remember that you want to have enough information in your notebook so that you can easily repeat this measurement, if and when necessary (e. g., you find a mistake). If the instrumental data were saved on disk, include the filename(s) with the data. ( More Info )

Calculations : An example of each calculation performed to reach the final reported answers should be shown with the units clearly shown at each step. For most exercises in a teaching laboratory, only one example of each different calculation needs to be included. Be sure to label each calculation and parallel the order in which the calculations appear in the procedure. You may want to set up the calculations before coming to lab to maximize your laboratory efficiency.

It is sometimes acceptable to include calculations in the Results section as needed.  This is usually done in research situations where you need to make a calculation that you did not anticipate at the start of the experiment, but is sometimes allowed in upper-level courses where the laboratory exercises are not “cookbook.”  Check your instructor’s syllabus, or ask him/her, for the format that you are to follow in your course.

If you made more than one measurement on the same phenomenon, calculate the average and standard deviation. Perform other statistical analyses as instructed. When an accepted or theoretical value is available, calculate a percent error. Include the output from any programs used to perform these calculations, and the filename under which the data were saved.

Discussion of Conclusions and Error Analysis : Summarize your results paralleling what you set forth in the Statement of Purpose , compare them to the expected results and try to place them in context (either in the larger field of chemistry or what you have done in class). This is not a long section; it may only be two or three pages long in the notebook.  The key to a good discussion section is to concisely cover the important points.

Do not write things like “I liked this lab”, “This lab went well” or “This lab was successfully completed”, and do not use personal pronouns. Take your time and put some thought into your conclusions.

The discussion should try to pinpoint various specific sources of error encountered from the standpoint of the most likely determinate and indeterminate errors in the procedure. Once you have identified a source of error in your measurement, evaluate how it affected the result, and then suggest how this error could be minimized or eliminated. Simply attributing everything to “human error” is insufficient, and will be graded accordingly. Some labs won’t have numerical results to discuss, but you can still indicate sources of uncertainty and how they could be, or were, minimized. To help you learn how to organize your discussion, brief outlines for the three types of exercises usually encountered in undergraduate chemistry laboratory exercises are given below. The types are:

Many aspects of the discussion section are the same in all three, but there are subtle differences that you should appreciate. These outlines are meant only as guides; you will need to adapt them to each particular experiment. Some experiments may incorporate components of each of these three broad categories. In that case, you will need to write a conclusion that combines the three types of discussions.

Outline for Measurement Experiments

Outline for Synthesis Experiments

Outline for Reporting on Physical Phenomena

Summary of Results : For measurement and synthetic exercises you will need to include a final table summarizing the results of your experiment. For a measurement exercise this table should include each individual value used in the establishment of the average (check with your instructor if you have more than three or four individual values), the standard deviation, and the confidence limit. For a synthetic exercise your summary table should include the percent yield and the measured physical properties of the new substance. Once the Summary of Results has been recorded, sign and date the experiment.

Labels for Products : If you prepared a substance in the exercise, you must place it in a properly labeled bottle and give it to your instructor. The bottle label must include:

The other physical properties used in characterization may include: experimental melting point, boiling point, melting point, NMR chemical shifts, IR peaks, etc. Only one or two physical properties need to be listed (check with your instructor as to which one, or ones, to include). The corresponding literature value for each property should also be listed, if known.

To simplify keeping track of your computer data files use the following format: MMDDYY###.xxx, where MM is the month, DD is the day, YY the last two digits of the year, ### is the experiment or spectrum number, and xxx is a file extension that shows the files format (e. g., dat for ASCII files, xls for Excel? files). So, the third spectrum saved on June 25, 2003 in ASCII format would be given the name 062503003.dat. The advantage of this system is that all the information needed to find the experimental details in your notebook are given in the filename. Some software packages automatically use some form of this system in naming their files (e. g., Br?er’s XWINNMR).

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Notebook Examples

The following example notebook entries are from an experiment where wild type and rad1 mutant yeast were plated, exposed to varying amounts of UV light, allowed to grow for one week, and then surviving yeast colonies were counted.

Example 1 (concise & complete):

This notebook entry does not have a lot of extra text or content but contains all the necessary information to understand why they did the experiment (purpose), how they did the experiment (methods), what they found (results), and what their findings meant (conclusions). The title is informative and the purpose clearly explains why they were doing this experiment. Their methods have enough detail (like the dilution factor for the yeast and how much they plated) for someone to replicate this experiment. The notebook is organized – their title (which would be in their table of contents) would make it easy for someone interested in knowing how yeast respond to various doses of UV light to find this experiment and their sections in the entry are well-labeled so someone could quickly jump to the section they care about (perhaps methods if they wanted to redo the experiment or results if they wanted to use the data to help them choose a UV dose to use in their experiment). Their results have the raw data (colony counts) and their conclusions are clearly stated.

Example 2 (lovely notebook):

This notebook has all the necessary information (like in example 1) but gives a little detail that would help anyone reading this notebook easily follow the entire experiment.

They clearly separated the multiple purposes for carrying out the experiment. They included their actual dilution volumes used (this can be handy both to double check your calculation accuracy if after getting your results your yeast concentration was off, and to save yourself the time of having to redo these same calculations in the next lab). Having your volumes written down (in your notebook or on a scrap paper) also reduces the chance of you absentmindedly using the wrong volume when actually pipetting.

Their methods section also includes useful information/tips that would help anyone trying to replicate the experiment (like how to place yeast on the UV box and that time began when the blue light came on). They also include some reasoning to explain their methods (like why the yeast were placed in the brown bag) which would help someone replicating the experiment recognize vital experimental details (that the yeast must be kept in the dark).

Their notebook also makes it very easy to follow the experiment from page to page by marking on each page where it continues and where it continued from (this can be especially useful for experiments that have long – say months – of incubation before you collect the data). The title also makes it clear which pages are continuations.

Their results have the raw data (this is necessary), as well as information on how the data was collected that could be useful. Like who counted in case different partners have different counting biases if say one counted teeny tiny colonies and another did not. They also noted how each plate was counted so it is obvious which ones should be very accurate (entire plate counted) and which ones may have larger error (only ¼ of the plate was counted). Their results also includes data from other groups. Even though this is not their own data it is useful to help interpret the experiment so is helpful to include. Data analyses (such as graphs) are also included which would save someone from redoing the analyses if they were interested in these results and also makes it easier to evaluate the conclusions drawn.

Their conclusions are organized into separate thoughts and include not only conclusions for their original purpose questions but also thoughts on their technique.

Example 3 (too minimal):

This notebook is lacking detail. Although the level of detail is enough for the researcher to understand exactly what they did and what they found for several weeks after the experiment, if they were to come back to it 2 years later they would likely have a hard time replicating the exact same experiment or making sense of the data. The title (yeast 1) should be more descriptive. The main purpose of the title is to identify the experiment clearly enough that someone searching the table of contents (with say 100 different experiments listed all likely related to yeast and UV) could easily determine which experiment they are interested in when searching for something specific (like what dose of UV gives 50% death in wt yeast?). The sections should also be clearly identified. Their methods needs more information for someone to replicate it (like how much were the yeast diluted, and how were they stored after UV exposure). Their results are also not labeled clearly enough – UV(sec) and colony counts should be labeled so that the data is unambiguous.

Example 4 (too hard to read):

This is an example where although the original author may be able to read this it would be extremely difficult for someone else to read it. You don’t have to have perfect handwriting but you should take the time to write clearly enough for someone else to understand.

Example 5 (disorganized):

This notebook is not organized clearly. Where is the data continued from? It seems to be from a different experiment. When a page contains information for multiple experiments you shoud clearly demarcate which goes to which experiment. Draw a line across the page to mark a new experiment and clearly label where experiments are continued from. The dates should also be marked when data is filled in to a page that was started on a previous day (for example their data was collected one week after they plated the yeast so they should label their data with a collection date). Their data table must also be labeled as it is not clear what plate #1,2,etc. represents. While this may be clear to the researcher at the time they write in their notebook they need to make sure an outsider would also be able to understand what each plate represents (perhaps include a table showing what yeast and UV exposure was used for each plate number or instead of using plate number just use yeast and UV exposure in the data table itself).

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• 06 August 2018

How to pick an electronic laboratory notebook

• Roberta Kwok 0

Roberta Kwok is a freelance science writer based in Kirkland, Washington.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Illustration by The Project Twins

Since at least the 1990s, articles on technology have predicted the imminent, widespread adoption of electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) by researchers. It has yet to happen — but more and more scientists are taking the plunge.

One barrier to uptake is the wide range of products available. ELNs comprise software that helps researchers to document experiments, and that often has features such as protocol templates, collaboration tools, support for electronic signatures and the ability to manage the lab inventory. But the ELN market encompasses considerable variety; a study conducted in 2016 by the University of Southampton, UK, identified 72 active products ( S. Kanza et al. J. Cheminformatics 9 , 31; 2017 ). “It’s just insane,” says Sian Jones, a petroleum engineer at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “It does become very confusing.” And many researchers simply lack the time or motivation to make the move to ELNs.

But today’s early-career researchers, who have grown up with digital technology, tend to expect — and to embrace — electronic solutions. Recent trends in research have also created a demand for such changes: as scientists deal with increasing volumes of data, gluing printed results into a paper notebook becomes more archaic. Concerns over reproducibility, as well as more stringent requirements on data management from funding agencies, have motivated improvements in the documentation of lab work. And the ELN market has expanded to include more intuitive tools, such as cloud-based products, which are easier to adopt than those requiring information technology (IT) support to install. “I do feel that we’re approaching a tipping point,” says Alastair Downie, head of IT at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK.

ELN developers say that they have also seen signs of growing interest. Where researchers once questioned the utility of ELNs, now they are quicker to commit, says Simon Bungers, co-founder of labfolder, an ELN company in Berlin. Benchling, an electronic research platform in San Francisco, California, has seen use of its ELN in academia more than double for the past two years, with tens of thousands of researchers now logging in every day, says chief executive Sajith Wickramasekara. And many universities have started to provide such products to their researchers. For instance, LabArchives in Carlsbad, California, has sold campus-wide site licences for its ELN platform to more than 375 research institutions worldwide. (Last month, LabArchives announced a partnership with Macmillan Learning of New York City, which is part of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group in Stuttgart, Germany; Holtzbrinck is the majority shareholder in Nature ’s publisher, Springer Nature.)

Advocates tout the many advantages of ELNs over their paper counterparts. They are easy to search, copy and archive. And thanks to templates, scientists don’t have to rewrite protocols. Researchers can link experiments to specific samples or files, as well as share information easily with other lab members and collaborators, facilitating reproducibility. And supervisors can monitor the activity of their teams remotely.

But there are downsides, too. Although many companies offer free versions of their ELN software, those often come with limits on the number of users, data storage or file size. If the company folds or raises its prices, researchers might find themselves with only a PDF export of their data, which they are then unable to transfer to a competing product. Network interruptions could temporarily restrict access to data. And researchers might still prefer to make some notes or sketches on paper at the bench, which must then be imported into the ELN.

Despite these shortcomings, more and more researchers are going digital. To find a software solution that suits your needs, experienced users suggest taking the following steps.

Get educated.  Online resources can give prospective users a sense of the market. Downie’s guide to ELNs , hosted on the Gurdon Institute’s website, includes information on attributes such as cost tiers, support for computing platforms, and where the data can be stored for 28 products. The Electronic Lab Notebook Matrix , collated by Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, lists the details of more than 50 features for 27 ELNs. And labfolder provides a guide to 16 popular ELNs .

Calculate costs.  Paid versions of most ELN services used in academia cost US$10–20 per user per month, Downie says. The restrictions that are associated with free versions of these tools might be malleable, particularly as storage prices fall; Wickramasekara says that the 10-gigabyte limit on Benchling’s free academic platform, for instance, can often be raised on request. Open-source options such as the Open Science Framework from the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia, also are available.

Understand legal issues.  Some funders place restrictions on where data can be stored, so researchers should keep this in mind when evaluating cloud-based ELNs. Scientists who use personal data that fall within the scope of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation should consider whether an ELN’s data storage complies with those rules. Choosing ELN software that enables completed pages to be locked and electronically signed could be crucial if the documents are needed to defend researchers against claims of fraud, or must be submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration as part of regulatory processes. Digitally signed and witnessed documents could also be used as evidence in a patent dispute, says Denise Callihan, who manages library services, including patent searching and ELN system, for paints and coatings company PPG in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. PPG uses an ELN software called PatentSafe from Amphora Research Systems in Andover, Massachusetts.

Evaluate stability.  Researchers might want to assess the ELN company’s chances of survival. Daureen Nesdill, a research-data-management librarian at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, says she considered this question when evaluating options in 2010. She favoured LabArchives, partly because the company’s executives had already launched successful bibliographic-management software. Nesdill advises researchers to choose a company that is at least five years old, has stable funding and states in its terms of service that users will be able to access their data if the firm goes under or is sold.

Think mobile.  Some labs prefer ELNs that can run on mobile devices. That was the case for Richard Gates, a chemical engineer at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He and his colleagues wanted to use tablets to record experiments while working in a clean room, because the devices are portable and can be wiped down easily. The researchers, who chose Microsoft’s note-taking software OneNote as an ELN, use the tablet’s camera to take photographs of instruments and results, and a stylus to annotate images.

Consider software integration.  Links to favourite software could tip the scales for some scientists. Organic chemists, for instance, might prefer the PerkinElmer Signals Notebook from PerkinElmer in Waltham, Massachusetts, says Nesdill, because it integrates with the company’s chemical-structure-drawing software ChemDraw, enabling structures to be added to the ELN. ResearchSpace in Edinburgh, UK, integrates its ELN with tools such as software-development platform GitHub and reference manager Mendeley, Jones notes.

Go for a test drive.  Jones suggests test-driving free versions of a few products, ranging from basic to complex. “Don’t look at more than four, otherwise your head explodes,” she says. While evaluating several ELNs last year, Christoph Seiler, who runs a facility for zebrafish experiments at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, asked himself, “Is that an interface I can use every day?” He settled on Benchling, partly because he found its ELN to be attractive and well-organized.

Preferences for minor features come down to personal taste. For instance, Downie likes the way that the ELN from SciNote in Middleton, Wisconsin, provides a flexible, flow-chart-like structure, and Jones enjoyed seeing a feed of other users’ activities in Labguru, an ELN from BioData in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Digital Science in London, which is part of Holtzbrinck, is an investor in BioData.)

Try generic platforms.  Some scientists stick with generic note-taking products. Michael Gotthardt, a cardiovascular-disease researcher at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin, chose OneNote because he wanted a low-cost product with “essentially no learning curve” that the IT department could install locally with ease. Every month, his team exports pages to PDF files and signs them electronically; the files are then moved to a directory where they cannot be changed. Evernote, from Evernote Corporation in Redwood City, California, is an alternative note-taking option.

Commit to change.  In 2017, Downie co-led a trial of four ELNs, in which researchers at the University of Cambridge rated features such as user interface, support for collaboration and file-management capabilities. Although many scientists initially expressed enthusiasm about ELNs, only 37 of the 161 participants completed the exercise. “It shows the level of commitment that’s required,” Downie says. “You can’t just stick your toe in the water. You’ve got to dive all the way in.”

That said, some acclimatization might be required. Gotthardt gave his team three months to play with OneNote while continuing to record experiments on paper. Everyone then made the switch — a change that went smoothly, he says. Ulrich Dirnagl, an experimental neurologist at the Berlin Institute of Health, which provides labfolder to employees at one of its institutions, says that he has seen the most uptake when one lab member starts using an ELN and word spreads to colleagues, rather than when the entire group is forced to convert.

“Before, they said, ‘I don’t need this, and I just want to scribble down my little notes’,” Dirnagl says. “Three weeks into the ELN, they want to press a button for a cappuccino.”

Nature 560 , 269-270 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05895-3

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How to Use Notion as a Research Lab Notebook for Ph.D. Research

Notion is one of my favorite tools for organizing my research lab experiments, notes, data, and tasks! Notion is a free and premium cloud-based app that allows you to create highly customizable and visual pages and dashboards for keeping your life organized.

I first started using Notion in 2021 during my Ph.D., when I created the free Simple Graduate Student Notion Dashboard . As I learned more about using Notion , I developed this Research Lab Notebook template to keep track of all my research lab-related tasks, protocols, and notes, all while storing important information like literature reviews and data. This research lab notebook is an excellent Notion template for Ph.D., master’s, and undergraduate students engaged in research. Sign up for a Notion account here if you don’t already have an account!

This Research Lab Notebook template is only for organizing research lab experiments. I currently do not have this template integrated with any manuscript, thesis, or dissertation writing tools aside from literature review. But this template is certainly designed to be used and referenced during the writing process!

What is Notion?

Are you new to Notion? Here’s what Notion has to offer!

Notion is a freemium organization software that offers the ability to design pages, templates, and databases for arranging important information, creating lists, taking down notes, and more! Notion is especially beneficial for students since being a student involves extensive notetaking, project planning, and organization.

Notion offers much more than other note-taking apps or task trackers on the market. It allows you to fully customize your pages and databases so you can work smarter, not harder. Since it’s fully customizable, you can create pages that work best for you! Notion has an expansive gallery of templates where other users share their templates (either for free or purchase), so you can truly find a template for anything! With the recent addition of Notion AI , you can power your workspace with AI. I’ve enjoyed using Notion AI for summarizing, paraphrasing, brainstorming, and organizing my thoughts from my existing Notion pages. All you have to do is submit a prompt or ask a question and Notion AI will output a result! Notion AI is also seamlessly integrated into Notion and easily accessible on any page by simply double-tapping the spacebar!

Notion is a free tool but also offers premium subscriptions. The free version offers all basic tools for using and creating Notion templates. But premium subscriptions offer more tools and functionality for small and large teams, or even entire organizations. The free software is sufficient for individuals, but if you work on a small team, like with a research group, the Plus subscription offers features like unlimited file uploads and more! If you’re a student and plan on uploading a lot of files or documents into Notion for storage, you might need to upgrade to Plus to get unlimited file uploads. Notion is available across all your devices, so you can always access your Notion from your phone, computer, or tablet.

Sign up for a Notion account here !

Why do I love using Notion?

I’ve been using Notion for several years now and have found it to be one of the best (and most fun) software to use for note-taking and organizing. Firstly, it’s plain fun to organize and design your template! You can easily create your Notion aesthetic and design pages to fit your needs. I also love how I can use it across all my devices. It’s also very affordable for students, as there is a free version. And Notion AI is well-priced at just $8 a month.

Why should I buy a Notion template?

Purchasing a Notion template instead of making your own takes the work out of getting organized! With a ready-to-go template, you can dive right into organizing your Ph.D. without having to tinker with databases or create an aesthetic.

Research Lab Notebook Notion Template Features

What is included in the research lab notebook notion template.

The Research Lab Notebook Notion Template includes

• Homepage with daily and weekly experiment and task trackers
• Daily lab notebook database for tracking the day’s experiments and taking notes.
• Project management database views so you can manage all your research projects in a single view
• Detailed literature review template/literature review database
• Data management plan page
• Protocols database that can be related to lab notebook tasks and entries so you never forget which protocol you used!

Research Tasks and Experiments Database – The Brain of the Notion Template

The Daily and Weekly Tasks and Experiments databases are linked copies of the “All Research Projects Tasks and Experiments” database, so I will start by explaining this database first. The “Research Projects Tasks and Experiments” database is where you can input all of your research-related tasks and experiments. Each task or experiment can be labeled with the project, the goals, the due date, and the status.

After you input this information, if the date is “Today” the tasks will populate the Today’s Tasks and Experiments Table. And if the date is “Today or within one week from today,” it will populate the This Weeks Tasks and Experiments Table! On the master Research Projects Tasks and Experiments database, you can create additional views by simply adding a view along the top of the database. I’ve included views by project, status, or the calendar view. The project view is beneficial when you want to look at everything you’ve completed for a single project.

Daily Research Lab Notebook

Now, once you’re in the lab and working, you’ll want to keep track of everything you do during the day! You can do this in the Research Lab Notebook. Here, when you create a new entry, custom template will be generated so you can begin planning and tracking your day! The “Tasks and Experiments” property allows you to link to the associated tasks you created in the Research Projects Tasks and Experiments database. This way, your tasks and lab notebook are always linked! In this column, you can link to multiple tasks and experiments in case you do multiple experiments in one day.

n the next column, you can similarly link to any protocols stored in the protocol database. And when you go back to your protocol database, you can see all the lab notebook entries that used that protocol! Cool right? Everything links together so you can easily reference your experiments, lab notebook, and protocols from multiple pages on this template. You can also use different views to visualize your lab notebook by project.

Protocols Manager

Here is a quick view of the protocol database! Create your protocol here and use the relation property to link it to any of your lab notebook entries! For each protocol entry, you can write out your methodology, take notes, and link to any associated literature.

Literature Review Template

Like the protocols database, there is a designated page for reviewing literature! This database uses properties that will guide you through your reading, offers a space for file uploads and note taking, and a property for relating your entries to lab notebook entries and protocols!

I hope this template is helpful for you to keep all of your research notes organized in Notion! Let us know in the comments what other ways you use Notion to keep your research life organized!

How can I get the Research Lab Notebook Notion Template?

This template is a premium template, so it is for sale on the She Science Gumroad Shop or Etsy Shop . Once you purchase, you have lifetime access to the template and will receive any major updates via email!

Is there a subscription cost?

The Research Lab Notebook Notion Template can be used with a free Notion account.

How Much is the Research Lab Notebook Notion Template?

The Research Lab Notebook Notion Template is $9.

How do I get my Notion Template?

After your purchase, you will receive a PDF eBook with a link to lifetime access to the template and a guide on how to use the template.

Are you ready to organize your research?

The Research Lab Notebook Notion Template is here to help keep your research lab notes, experiments, tasks, and data organized!

✓ Maximize your productivity

✓ Never miss an experiment ✓ Manage your projects

Learn more about She Science’s Notion Templates

• Simple grad student Notion template
• All-in-one grad student Notion template for grad school, personal life, and professional development.
• Ph.D. Degree and Dissertation Planner template

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Comments (1).

How to Use Notion to Organize Your Research, Classes, and Grad School Life – She Sciences

July 21, 2022 at 7:13 pm

[…] If you’re looking for an in-depth research lab notebook template, check out the research notebook template I use! […]

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Productive Student Home and Office Desk Setup: Student Desk Must-Haves

Must have Back to School Supplies for Grad Students

• Utility Menu

• Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs)

Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELNs) are software programs that replace paper notebooks.  These digital tools are more secure options that allow researchers to electronically document experiments and observations, collaborate with their teams, templatize protocols, manage inventory, coordinate signatures, etc.  The use of ELNs also support researchers in their effort to comply with the ever-changing data management requirements from sponsors and journals.   

Eligibility information is outlined below based on providers with offerings that are available to the entire Harvard community or a specific unit/appointment. 

University-wide.

Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT)

Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) have become a standard in research labs, and a myriad of products that offer complete lab management solutions are now available across academia and industry. RSpace is a collaborative tool that enables researchers and their teams to work together in a way that is centralized, streamlined, and secure. RSpace offers integrations with other commonly used platforms (e.g. Slack, MS Teams, e-mail, calendar, etc.) that enable efficient lab management of labs, projects, and teams.

RSpace is available to Principal Investigators with a Harvard appointment.  Members of their labs, both researchers and administrators, can be added as users.

Service Provider

Service fee.

$100 per user per year to be paid for by the PI or their School/Department

Service Website

https://harvard.service-now.com/ithelp?id=kb_article&sys_id=d9950c05dbfb681460c0d9fcd39619cf

Contact Information

Contact David Heitmeyer at  [email protected]

Unit/Appointment-specific

Harvard medical school.

The eLABJournal Electronic Lab Notebook offers an intuitive and flexible solution to document research data. It improves efficiency when documenting, organizing, searching and archiving collected data in research laboratories. eLABJournal also offers tracking of sample collections, management of protocols or SOPs, and centralized lab supply ordering. You can also reserve laboratory instruments, track device validation, and be notified of events in the lab.

eLABJournal keeps a full audit trail of all recorded experiment data, samples, and protocols. Experiments can be signed and counter-signed with electronic signatures in accordance with FDA 21 CPR part 11 guidelines. It also allows researchers to collaborate and share data with colleagues, and enables PIs to keep track of the work being done in their lab.

HMS On-Quad Faculty, Staff and Students

Note: We are currently in the Pilot stage with eLABJournal. Only groups who have been approved by the ELN steering committee will be eligible for participation in the Pilot.

HMS Research Computing

https://it.hms.harvard.edu/rc/research-projects

[email protected]

• Research Administration & Compliance
• Research Computing
• Archiving Faculty Research Data and Archiving Data
• Buying and Licensing Data
• Copyright and Intellectual Property
• DASH Open-Access Repository
• Data Cleaning
• Data Curation
• Data Handling
• Data Retrieval
• Data Sharing and Publishing
• Data Visualization
• Dataset Creation
• Finding Data
• Geospatial Data
• Harvard Dataverse Repository
• Longwood Health Informationist
• Metadata Creation
• Qualitative Data
• Research Data Management Lifecycle
• Research Design
• Software & Platforms
• Text Analysis
• Training, Workshops & Capacity Building
• Active Research
• Dissemination & Preservation

Working together, we can reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives.

Research Scientist - Lab Technician (Dual Posting)

About the role.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform various in vivo procedures in rodents (primarily mice), such as dosing (IV, IP, SQ, PO), body weight measurements, clinical/in-life observations, sample/tissue harvests, necropsy, blood collection (cardiac, tail vein, saphenous), and euthanasia, while adhering to all standard operating procedures (SOPs), policies, animal welfare regulations, and regulatory procedures
• Assist in in vivo pharmacology pre-study laboratory activities and related ex vivo activities as needed (preparing/labeling consumables, placing orders, organizing reagents inventories, processing samples, etc.)
• Manage multiple assignments/projects as assigned while maintaining data quality and meeting timelines.
• Maintain a safe working environment and adhere to applicable safety regulations in a BSL 1 and/or 2 laboratory.
• Ensure compliance with all internal and external regulatory agencies in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals

Novartis Compensation and Benefit Summary: The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $69,300 - $103,900 / year for the Research Scientist I - Lab Technician and $84,000 - $126,000 for the Research Scientist II - Lab Technician. While salary ranges are effective from 1/1/24 through 12/31/24, fluctuations in the job market may necessitate adjustments to pay ranges during this period. Further, final pay determinations will depend on various factors, including, but not limited to geographical location, experience level, knowledge, skills, and abilities. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, including a sign-on bonus, restricted stock units, and discretionary awards in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits (including 401(k) eligibility and various paid time off benefits, such as vacation, sick time, and parental leave), dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment. If hired, employee will be in an “at-will position” and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

Novartis EVP Manifesto.mp4

Essential Requirements:

• Research Scientist I – Lab Technician: GED or High School degree with a 2-year degree in Veterinary Technology, 4-year Science degree with 1+ years of industry or academic experience or a combination of experience with higher education preferred. Proficiency (1+ years hands-on experience) with in vivo procedures in rodents, including multiple routes of dose administration (IP, PO, IV, SC), blood and sample collection (Cardiac, Tail vein, saphenous), dissection techniques, and necropsies. Recognition of typical/atypical animal health and behaviors.
• Research Scientist II – Lab Technician: GED or High School degree required with a 2-year degree in Veterinary Technology, 4-year Science degree with 3+ years of industry or academic experience or a combination of experience with higher education preferred. Proficiency (3+ years hands-on experience) with in vivo procedures in rodents, including multiple routes of dose administration (IP, PO, IV, SC), blood and sample collection (Cardiac, Tail vein, saphenous), dissection techniques, and necropsies. Recognition of typical/atypical animal health and behaviors.
• This position will be located at the Cambridge, MA site and will not have the ability to be located remotely. This position will not require travel.
• Demonstrated ability to quickly learn, multi-tasking, and good organizational skills.
• Strong attention to completion of tasks in an efficient/consistent manner
• Meticulous laboratory approach, careful adherence to protocols and lab notebook documentation
• Knowledge of Federal, state, and local Animal Welfare regulations and recommendations dealing with the humane use of animals in research.
• Must be reliable, focused on attention to detail, work independently as well as in a dynamic team environment. Organized, effective time management, detail-oriented, thorough, and consistent. Self-starter requiring no daily oversight.
• Highly motivated, with a sense of urgency and flexibility. Open to supporting transitional tasks and schedule changes.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (transparency, professionalism).
• The position requires performing in vivo work (working directly with rodents) and therefore must be able to wear appropriate PPE and physically perform the technical procedures.
• Ability to work from a standing position for prolonged time periods and perform repetitive motion tasks.
• Expected to work weekends, holidays when needed (~1x/month)  
• Knowledge of Microsoft Office, Outlook required.

Desirable Experience

• Experience with cancer models (xenografts or syngeneic), and in vivo assays for pharmacokinetic evaluations is a plus.
• Prior CRO experience is a plus.

Benefits and rewards: Read our handbook to learn about all the ways we’ll help you thrive personally and professionally: https://www.novartis.com/careers/benefits-rewards

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:

Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams' representative of the patients and communities we serve.

Why Novartis: Helping people with disease and their families takes more than innovative science. It takes a community of smart, passionate people like you. Collaborating, supporting and inspiring each other. Combining to achieve breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Ready to create a brighter future together? https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture

Join our Novartis Network: Not the right Novartis role for you? Sign up to our talent community to stay connected and learn about suitable career opportunities as soon as they come up: https://talentnetwork.novartis.com/network

Benefits and Rewards: Read our handbook to learn about all the ways we’ll help you thrive personally and professionally: https://www.novartis.com/careers/benefits-rewards

EEO Statement:

The Novartis Group of Companies are Equal Opportunity Employers who are focused on building and advancing a culture of inclusion that values and celebrates individual differences, uniqueness, backgrounds and perspectives. We do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects the world around us and connects us to the patients, customers and communities we serve.

Accessibility & Reasonable Accommodations

The Novartis Group of Companies are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an e-mail to [email protected] or call +1(877)395-2339 and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Please include the job requisition number in your message.