Lab notebook11/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Electronic lab notebooks can also be shared and accessed easily online with collaborators and lab members. If you write a lot of computer code and collect large datasets, the electronic notebook will be a better option for you because you can store and link your code and data to your electronic lab records. Microsoft OneNote is a proprietary software option. Some laboratories are writing lab notebooks using Microsoft Word, saving as “Web Page,” and automatically transfer the entries into a blog. If you do not identify the right technology, it can be very time-consuming to make a polished electronic notebook. The advantage of electronic notes is that they can be searched easily, and computer-generated figures can be quickly copied to the notebook. You also have the option of using an electronic lab notebook. Alternatively, you can use a ring binder, in which each project is maintained behind a separate tab divider inside the binder. If you find it too complicated to keep all of your projects in a single lab notebook, you can maintain a lab notebook for each project. Most computational biologists work on several projects at the same time. You will need to select the right type of notebook for your research. Each of these notebooks has its advantages and disadvantages. There are three types of lab notebooks: the bound or stitched notebook, the loose-leaf or three-ring binder notebook, and the computer-based electronic notebook. Rule 2: Select the Right Medium for Your Lab Notebook Here, I present the best practices (summarized as ten rules) for keeping a lab notebook in computational biology, for scientists pursuing exclusively “dry” research. It also serves as a legal record of ownership of the ideas and results obtained by a scientist. It is an organizational tool and memory aid, which serves as the primary record of scientific research and activity for all scientists. There seems to be a misconception in the computational biology community that a lab notebook is only useful for recording experimental protocols and their results. One of the major hurdles I face as the head of a computational biology laboratory is convincing my research team-particularly those pursuing exclusively mathematical and computational modeling-that they need to keep a laboratory notebook. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist. Additional funding is provided by the University of Michigan Protein Folding Disease Initiative. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedįunding: This work is supported by National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases grant R25 DK088752. PLoS Comput Biol 11(9):Įditor: Scott Markel, Accelrys, UNITED STATESĬopyright: © 2015 Santiago Schnell. Citation: Schnell S (2015) Ten Simple Rules for a Computational Biologist’s Laboratory Notebook. ![]()
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