Maintaining a Laboratory Notebook

Your lab notebook is a legal document. Bound, numbered, in ink, signed, and never missing a page.

DocumentTechnical Note
SubjectLab records
Revision2026.1
First published7 January 2020
A laboratory notebook is an essential part of running a lab. Beyond record keeping and process optimization, it may be used to establish and defend intellectual property, to support certifications, and in litigation. Notebooks can be electronic or loose-leaf, but a bound, stitched paper notebook is the legally stronger option. The principles below apply either way.

Materials

  • A bound, stitched notebook with numbered pages. Some include a printed layout with a designated place for each part of the page, which makes the rules below easy to follow.
  • A pen. Every entry is written in ink.

How the notebook is organized

Part What goes there
Front cover Notebook name and number (1, 2, 3 and so on)
Inside cover Start date, the names and contact details of everyone working on the projects inside, and the lab's mailing address
Table of contents Date, page number and a short description of each entry
Body Experimental and production entries, as below

Every page

  1. A descriptive title of what is on the page
  2. The name of the overarching project
  3. Notebook number (optional)
  4. The page the entry continues from, if any
  5. The body of the entry
  6. The page the entry continues to, if any
  7. Your signature and the date you signed
  8. A witness signature and date, from someone who understands the page, whenever the contents may have intellectual property value. For inventions, the witness date becomes the date of invention

What the body records

  • Motivation. Why the work is being done, for example optimizing a hemp to crude extraction process.
  • Procedure. What you did, including every deviation from the protocol.
  • Observations. All the data you collect: times, temperatures, pressures, weights. You may not know what matters in the moment, so record everything.
  • Ideas for future optimization or changes to the protocol.
  • Analysis. Processing of raw data and your interpretation.
  • Traceability. Where any data stored elsewhere lives, what nonstandard abbreviations mean, material sources (manufacturer, lot number, expiration date), and instrument serial numbers and calibration dates.

Rules that keep it credible

  • The notebook belongs to the lab, not to a person, and stays in the lab. Keep previous notebooks in one central place.
  • Record all data, including data that looks bad.
  • Correct mistakes, never remove them. Strike an error with a single line and initial it. Never tear out a page for any reason.
  • Draw a line through any blank page and initial it.
  • Tape or glue printouts and graphs in permanently, and sign across the edge so the signature sits on both the attachment and the page.
  • Keep notebooks at least five years past the end of the work, or for the life of any related patent plus six years.
  • Keep it clean. Assume it will be handled with bare hands.
Why it matters

A good notebook protects you and your company from allegations of fraud or misconduct, and it is the fastest way to find out why last Tuesday's run was better than today's.

Sources. U.S. National Cancer Institute Technology Transfer Center, Guide for Keeping Laboratory Records: Do's and Don'ts (2017). Thomson, J. A., How to Start and Keep a Laboratory Notebook, in Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation, MIHR and PIPRA (2007). N.B. Oler Technical Note, Maintaining a Laboratory Notebook (2020).

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