Research notebooks are used by scientists to organize their thoughts and research. They can be personal or lab notebooks, used to document ongoing experiments, intellectual property issues, and legal and ethical protocols. They come in various formats and can be purchased or provided by research organizations.
A research notebook is a notebook kept by a scientist to keep track of his research. There are several types of research notebooks, and you can use a variety of formats, from a traditional lined notebook to a computer program. Research notebooks are found by many scientists to be immensely useful for organizing thoughts and conducting professional and replicable research, and science students are often encouraged to keep such notebooks to improve their academic performance.
Some scientists keep a personal research notebook, where they write down a variety of thoughts and information. These notebooks can help scientists organize their thoughts and look at the material in a new way. A simple thought can mature into a paper or an idea for an experiment if jotted down, and a research notebook can also be used to track questions, queries, and ideas as they arise. The idea is that anything can be written down in the notebook and examined later to determine whether or not it is valuable.
Scientists who work in a laboratory setting also keep lab notebooks. Lab notebooks detail ongoing experiments and their results, along with lab protocol and general observations. Such notebooks typically remain the property of the laboratory and the agency or individual funding the study and may be used in interpreting events, preparing formal reports, and in attempts to replicate laboratory experiments.
For legal reasons, a scientist may also keep a research notebook to document intellectual property issues and demonstrate adherence to specific legal and ethical protocols. For example, if a researcher obtains permission to use animals in an experiment, he will clearly note the terms proposed by the ethics committee that oversees applications for the use of animals in research and document how the animals were handled. If the experiment should later be challenged for ethical or legal reasons, the scientist can use the research notebook to demonstrate that he acted with due diligence in the laboratory.
Many scientific supply companies sell research notebooks, in a variety of formats, from spiral bound to stitched and glued. Paper is often resistant to water and chemicals, so the notebook stands up to heavy use. Some laboratories and research organizations provide their own standardized notebooks to employees to make record keeping easier. Software for this purpose has also been devised and is readily available from companies that provide scientific software suites.
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