"Scientists maintain notebooks to refer to previous experimental procedures and data-it allows for reproducing protocols and results without reinventing the wheel," says Steven Lazar, senior patent counsel at Genetics Institute Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. Notebooks also are crucial to establish intellectual-property ownership. "Documents provide proof of progress, invention, and having met an objective," notes Joseph O. Falkinham, III, a professor of biology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. "There is also a new scrutiny in science. Any statement must be backed up by data in notebooks, including statements in research grants and proposals, as well as publications."
It was probably inevitable, in light of the ever-increasing role of computers in the lab, that electronic notebooks would emerge as a powerful way for scientists to record their activities. James D. Myers, a project leader at the environmental molecular sciences laboratory at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, ...
