My history is more associated with private companies performing work under regulatory agencies, including Good Laboratory Practices (GLP), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), and International Organization of Standardization (ISO), and it is for this reason and acting as a hiring manager for the last 20 years that I wanted to respond.

With each of these agencies, documentation is obviously of utmost importance.  Entry level scientists will not have much relevant experience outside of academia, so I will often discuss what type of documentation that they were required to keep in their lab classes.  I have found that those students required to keep lab notebooks starting at earlier level courses had a better understanding/discipline when it came to meeting documentation requirements and to answer why documentation is so important.

I hope this helps,

Regards,

Phil

In 2019 NIST published an important report on this topic. I reproduce a bit of it here:

--------------------------------
Summary Report on Scientific Integrity - November 2019

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a non-regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST's mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.

Foundation of Scientific Integrity in Government

NIST has in place a number of policies and procedures to ensure the integrity of the scientific and technological information it develops and disseminates to the public. Relevant policies currently in effect are summarized below. The NIST Manual sets forth policies and defines responsibilities that apply to the communication of NIST technical program results by staff members, guest researchers, research associates, and others who participate in technical programs.

Research Notebooks

The NIST Manual explains that all NIST technical communications are derived from the technical activities of its employees and supported by the technological records (e.g., research notebooks) they maintain. It is NIST policy that all NIST employees engaged in research and development activities are responsible for maintaining a thorough and accurate record of their work by keeping a research notebook following internal Operating Unit policies. Recognizing that scientific data at NIST are increasingly generated, stored and reported digitally, the NIST Leadership Board established a Scientific Data Lifecycle Management Working Group to study the collection, storage, use, repurposing and preservation of NIST's digital scientific data.

Statements of Uncertainty

A key element of Scientific Integrity relating to scientific and technical research has to do with statements of uncertainty associated with measurement results. According to long-standing published NIST policy, a measurement result is considered complete only when accompanied by a quantitative statement of its uncertainty. NIST policy requires uncertainty statements, and also requires that a uniform approach to expressing measurement uncertainty be followed. To ensure that uncertainty statements are consistent with each other and with international practice, the NIST policy adopts the approach to expressing measurement uncertainty recommended by the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM).
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To me this lays it out in black and white - the requirement, the justification and the direction to follow.

I consider it the responsibility of every laboratory course to include education on the care and feeding of laboratory notebooks. This education, however, cannot possibly be comprehensive in any particular course, rather as in my case it is incremental - in each course the students are exposed to more intellectually sophisticated concepts regarding laboratory records. With time and accumulated course credits they develop and internalize a full picture. I wouldn't expect 100-level students to understand how the pharmaceutical industry maintains, utilizes and even prosecutes intellectual property cases using laboratory records. Yet, I do expect that of 400-level students.

In concert with my position I dedicate a significant portion of each and every laboratory course I conduct to the care and maintenance of laboratory records in the form of a laboratory notebook. I begin with a verbal statement espousing the NIST policy, how students will maintain a hard copy notebook, how modern Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) are in use in many industries yet we will not in this course for a number of reasons (cost of implementation, variety of systems and sticking with the fundamental pedagogy while not getting caught up in the technology), how laboratory records are used in laboratories (academic and industrial) and lastly how the student notebooks will be reviewed and assessed by teaching staff. Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) do the review and assessment work (they also need the training) and it is for credit.

I have a special spot on my faculty course web site for some material on this topic. See the site in the sig below, follow the links for courses->all courses->laboratory notebooks - records and style. Students use this material in all my courses.

BTW, My site including course items is freely available to ALL. Feel free to browse it and even use it in your own situations. Don't forget always to provide suitable and adequate acknowledgement. (I also discuss how to acknowledge all kinds of assistance in publications in another part of my courses.) I welcome learning how it is used elsewhere.

jadv

-- 

Joseph A DiVerdi, PhD, MBA

Professor of Chemistry

Vice-Chair of Faculty Council

Colorado State University

+1.970.980.5868

diverdi.colostate.edu

K0NMR

Hello All,

 

Does your institution use and teach lab notebooks? If so, which labs and levels?

 

I'm in my third semester as adjunct at a community college teaching Gen Chem II labs.

 

My department was pleased that I would be willing to introduce lab notebook pedagogy and fully implement at this level of inorganic chemistry.

 

(The organic labs already incorporate lab notebooks and do a great job of teaching its use).

 

I am finding out that not all Utah universities are using lab notebooks at this level of Gen Chem labs, and of those that do, only one actually teaches the rigors of proper implementation. (Shout out to UVU for that).

 

I want to know what your university does. Which levels and/or why or why not?

 

Here is a link to a rubric I modified from Prof. Tom Strangfeld at UVU. (I was his lab aid in the late 80s early 90s)

 

https://tinyurl.com/Labnotation

 

Would love some thoughts and feedback.

 

Warm regards,

 

David EldrEdge

Co-Owner

NALTIC Industrials, LLC

www.naltic.com

888.891.0077

435.503.4972

 

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