Lab journal
A laboratory journal or laboratory notebook is a notebook in which the planning, execution and evaluation of scientific experiments is documented. Since the award of a scientific discovery or patent (in some countries, e.g. the USA) may depend on who first made a discovery or invention , there are strict rules on how to keep a laboratory journal, from The employer or the university can also make different regulations. In general, however, you should proceed as follows:
- A lab journal is a bound notebook ; usually with numbered pages, usually in the sizes DIN A4 or DIN A5 and no loose-leaf collection. It is a chronological documentation of the scientific activity. Since several experiments are often carried out in parallel (and over several days), the numbering of the pages makes it easier to cross-reference between experiments.
- The entries should be made with indelible ink (e.g. a ballpoint pen); the use of pencils is excluded. The records should be so detailed that they can be understood by a person with specialist knowledge and, if necessary, repeated (e.g. by colleagues while the journalist is on vacation or sick).
- The laboratory journal should be written during or immediately after the experiment so that important details and observations are not forgotten.
- Measured values and calculations should be noted directly in the laboratory notebook. This avoids errors that could creep in through copying.
- If possible, raw data in the form of printouts, photographs, X-ray films, etc. should be pasted into the laboratory journal. In the case of data collections that do not fit in the laboratory journal (e.g. computer files or because the data volume is too large), a note should be made of where the original data is archived to make it easier to find.
- Spelling and calculation errors should be crossed out (not blackened out) and not made illegible with Tipp-Ex . It should always be clear which letters / numbers were there before. The correction date should be noted next to it and provided with a paraphe .
- If a laboratory journal is full, a table of contents should be created. When you look it up later, you can immediately see which projects were worked on during the journal's runtime and where the individual contributions to the projects can be found.
- Headings (preferably with project / trial number) make the documentation clear.
Some universities or companies also require the following:
- Each page must be dated and signed by the experimenter. An independent witness confirms with his signature that the records are traceable and complete. If a page is not completely written on, the unused part of the page must be crossed out diagonally.
- If you discover an error on a previous page, you must not correct it there, but must make a reference to the current page; if necessary, you have to explain what consequences this error has for the subsequent work.
Electronic laboratory notebook (ELN)
The laboratory journal is increasingly being kept with the help of a computer. This relieves the laboratory staff from having to constantly write down the measured values and supports them through additional functions. A computer-aided laboratory journal, or electronic laboratory notebook (ELN), offers significant advantages: Reading and writing errors are avoided, a search function enables a quick search for experiments, results, etc. and forgery-proof filing with an electronic signature is possible. Test parameters, measurement data and evaluated results are presented in protocol sheets with tables, text fields and xy or xt diagrams. The computer-aided laboratory journal is usually integrated into laboratory automation software. In addition, it is possible to easily make the entries in the laboratory journal available to all employees by means of appropriate database systems, whereby there is often only read authorization for the other or for old data, which prevents the data from being accidentally deleted. An electronic laboratory notebook is also part of the development of the Paperless Lab. This development towards the Paperless Lab is based on the one hand on the ecological approach of reducing paper consumption and on the other hand on avoiding an archive for paper documents.
Individual evidence
- ^ GI Lang, D. Botstein: A test of the coordinated expression hypothesis for the origin and maintenance of the GAL cluster in yeast. In: PloS one. Volume 6, number 9, 2011, ISSN 1932-6203 , p. E25290, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0025290 , PMID 21966486 , PMC 3178652 (free full text).
