Recording Experimental Data

Purpose

To provide guidelines for students and researchers on recording results of experimental work.

Introduction

A laboratory notebook is an essential tool for any researcher and a properly kept laboratory ebook serves as an invaluable aid to solving problems that may arise during the course of a project and also when writing up results for publication or for a thesis / dissertation. A well-maintained and properly documented laboratory notebook can serve a number of purposes in that it:

Provides a permanent record of research protocols and results which can be referred to in the future.

Serves to demonstrate compliance with good laboratory practice.

Acts as an invaluable source of information for a variety of purposes, including determination of claims of discovery where new inventions are concerned.

Serves to demonstrate adherence to standards of good practice, and of academic and ethical integrity.

Demonstrates compliance with contractual provisions permitting sponsors to audit work carried out in pursuit of sponsored research.

May be used to validate claims of discovery or intellectual property rights where new inventions are concerned.

Laboratory Notebooks General Guidance

A properly bound and formatted laboratory notebook should be used that contains:

Title page - state your name, address and a brief indication of its purpose

Table of contents - several printed pages in which to log your experiments in chronological order.

Sequentially numbered pages - each page should be clearly numbered and should have a space for signature and date at the bottom

Pages should be bound. Loose-leaf notebooks should be avoided and permanent bindings used to avoid any suggestion that pages might have been removed or inserted. Laboratory notebooks in a series should also be numbered sequentially.

Dates should be recorded unambiguously (i.e. 8 July 2002 8/7/02 or 7/8/02) to avoid confusion arising if the dates are written in the UK and read in the US.

Corrections should be clearly visible and struck through with a single line. Irreversible substances (such as Tipp-ex) should not be used.

Entries (made in indelible ink and not pencil) should be consistent and continuous. Spaces and other anomalies should be clearly explained in the text.

Experimental work should be written up contemporaneously - do not trust to memory, even for a minute or two a simple distraction is all that is needed for an idea to become forgotten.

Do not use odd scraps of paper to record data

Record all ideas contemporaneously

Record experimental findings honestly

Sign and date all entries in your laboratory book promptly.

Entries should be witnessed and corroborated regularly by a scientist who is not working on the same project, but who is competent to understand the work.

Ideas should be expressed in a clear narrative style. Each individual entry should be intelligible to another investigator without specific explanation.

Investigators working together on a joint project should each maintain a separate record of the research project.

Electronic notes should be avoided. However, if such notes are taken hard copies of the entries should be printed out regularly, signed, dated and affixed to consecutive pages of a bound notebook.

All diagrams, chromatographic print outs should be permanently affixed in the notebook. DNA gels should be photographed and copies of the photograph fixed to appropriate pages in the notebook. Temporary measures such as staples or paperclips should not be used.

Where digital images form the source of a photographic record at least two independent backup copies should be made and stored separately in different secure locations.

Most instrumental results nowadays are directly recorded electronically. Make immediate print outs of your results and back up the computer files daily.

Entries should never be changed or added to at a later date.

Recording Experiments

Each experiment should be written up following a uniform and standard structure viz:

Title of the experiment

Aim / objective describing the purpose of the experiment and what it is intending to achieve

Experimental protocol

Results

Discussion of results

Conclusions

Questions arising from the results new problems / issues that arise as a consequence of the experiment.

Observations and Data

The observations you make and the data that you record should be recorded in a form that is understandable if you need to refer back to your experiment months or even years after the experiment was performed. Results and observations should also be readily understandable to other colleagues.

Drawings need only illustrate novel apparatus and should be large enough to allow labelling, simple and to the point.

Tables should be clear and understandable. Results should be written in vertical columns, each column being headed with the quantity and the appropriate units.

When preparing graphs provide a clear table of the data you used to plot the graph.

Each graph should have the experimental title and the date written clearly.

Graph axes must be labelled with the quantity divided by its unit.

Include error bars if you know the error limits

Discussion and conclusion

Calculations should be clearly set out, showing all the steps

Relate your results to your hypothesis - do they support or refute it?

your conclusions should state:

what you found out

whether the hypothesis was supported or not

the error limits on your answer(s)

suggestions for improvement in experimental design, if appropriate the error analysis will be useful here

ideas for subsequent experiments

References

Laboratory Record Keeping by Garadian, T.E., (August 1997), Nature Biotechnology Volume