Lab Notebooks

[Anonymous No.7303726]

How do you guys keep and organize your lab notebook and how much do you abstract out? The question is for molecular biology related work, if that changes the answer.

Our lab team is a bunch of undergraduates, most of which are doing lab work for the first time, and I myself haven't ever been in a real lab setting where a graduate student has watched over me and given me strict guidelines.

For example, when I am making agarose gel for a gel electrophoresis, do I write down all things I do to make the gel, or is it enough to just write down the percent gel I used and the fact that I performed an electrophoresis?

Also, are there helpful tricks or rules you've come across when keeping a lab notebook that up to 10 different people will be working with this lab notebook? Should protocols be written before the experiment, or during? Should everyone sign off? Is there a way you organize protocols from results? Do you use an online notebook versus a physical copy, or both?

Insight is appreciated!

[Anonymous No.7303742]

Organic Chemist undergrad here..

From what I understand lab notebooks are meant to do two things.

1. Allow anyone with experience in said field to recreate the experiment just using your notebook as a guide. From what I understood you really don't need to go in detail with the results, but the data you need to get there (for example mass-to-volume conversions) are needed.

2. To be used in a legal setting to verify that the data and experiment are indeed genuine and not ripped off.

P.S. - I was told that it doesn't need to be the neatest work ever, just legible and comprehensive enough to accurately recreate the experiment.

[Anonymous No.7303748]

>>7303742
PhD elect here

Good luck recreating my experiments from my lab book!

The judge would literally throw it out

[Anonymous No.7303758]

>>7303748
That actually sucks man... What if you get caught in a legal bind where you need to prove that you didn't rip someone off/purposefully ignore state/federal regulations?

[Anonymous No.7304149]

>>7303742
Agreed. You should have enough info in your notebook (and methods section of a manuscript, both acts another story) for someone to reproduce your data. That doesn't mean you need to include every detail for standard experiments, but note that you followed a standard protocol, which can be found somewhere in your notebook, and any deviations for this protocol.

I was told (but never bothered to check it out) that if you receive funding from the U.S. government (not sure if this applies to you), they are legal documents to be kept for a minimum amount of time. I also think I came across an article mentioning they can be used for patent applications (again, in the U.S.). Either way, I'd kept a good record of what's going on as a good habit.

I usually link data on my computer with my records in my notebook by giving the data of entry in the notebook for that of the file name plus a short descriptor. I've found from other students that have come through the lab that just a descriptor as a file name becomes meaningless after some time has past. With a date, I can have a general idea of when the experiment was done and go back to my notebook to see my records for the experiment.