---
title: "Open-notebook science"
chunk: 1/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-notebook_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:31.268183+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Open-notebook science is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded. This involves placing the personal, or laboratory, notebook of the researcher online along with all raw and processed data, and any associated material, as this material is generated. The approach may be summed up by the slogan 'no insider information'. It is the logical extreme of transparent approaches to research and explicitly includes the making available of failed, less significant, and otherwise unpublished experiments; so called 'dark data'. The practice of open notebook science, although not the norm in the academic community, has gained significant recent attention in the research and general media as part of a general trend towards more open approaches in research practice and publishing. Open notebook science can therefore be described as part of a wider open science movement that includes the advocacy and adoption of open access publication, open data, crowdsourcing data, and citizen science. It is inspired in part by the success of open-source software and draws on many of its ideas.

== History ==
The term "open-notebook science" was first used in 2006 in a blog post by Jean-Claude Bradley, an associate professor of chemistry at Drexel University at the time. Bradley described open-notebook science as follows:

... there is a URL to a laboratory notebook that is freely available and indexed on common search engines. It does not necessarily have to look like a paper notebook but it is essential that all of the information available to the researchers to make their conclusions is equally available to the rest of the world

== Practitioners ==

=== Active ===

==== Experimental (alphabetical by last name) ====
Aled Edwards & colleagues, University of Toronto.
Rachel Harding, post-doctoral fellow with University of Toronto's (SGC) Structural Genomics Consortium.
blog at http://labscribbles.com/
Twitter @labscribbles
Zenodo https://zenodo.org/search?f=author&p=Rachel%20Harding&ln=en
"A team of groundbreaking scientists at SGC are now sharing their lab notebooks online".

Nickolas J. LaSorte, Postdoctoral Fellow at the FDA in the area of Wireless Coexistence.
Tamara Maiuri
blog at https://raytruantlab.wordpress.com/
Twitter @tam_maiuri
Zenodo https://zenodo.org/search?page=1&size=20&q=maiuri
Peter Murray-Rust, Cambridge, UK.
Anthony Salvagno, Ph.D., Director of Education of #SciFund Challenge.
Matthew H. Todd, Open Source Malaria, University College London (Todd Group).
Open Notebook Science Challenge
The Digital Botanical Gardens Initiative (DBGI) observable at http://www.dbgi.org/dendron-dbgi/

==== Theoretical ====
Tobias J. Osborne
Carl Boettiger, Theory and computational modeling in ecology and evolution.
Dror Bar-Natan
Andrés G. Saravia, physics Ph.D. student at Cinvestav-Mérida.
Daniel Himmelstein, who led Project Rephetio — a drug repurposing study that used GitHub and Thinklab for realtime open notebook science and collaboration.

=== Archived (alphabetical by last name) ===
Brigette Black), physics Ph.D. student in Koch lab at the University of New Mexico.
Jean-Claude Bradley
Jeremiah Faith
Nadiezda Fernandez-Oropeza, Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student in Koch lab at the University of New Mexico.
Mike Lawrence
Linh Le, undergraduate physics major and alumnus of Koch lab at the University of New Mexico.
Andy Maloney, postdoctoral researcher in Smyth lab at University of Texas. Ph.D. in Koch lab at the University of New Mexico (2011)
Cameron Neylon
Alejandro Tamayo
Influenza Origins and Evolution

=== Recurrent (educational) ===
Junior Physics Lab (307L) at University of New Mexico

=== Partially open/pseudo-open notebooks ===
These are initiatives more open than traditional laboratory notebooks but lacking a key component for full Open Notebook Science. Usually either the notebook is only partially shared or shared with significant delay.

The Open Notebook Science Network  is a WordPress blog network designed to be used to create and maintain individual/lab notebooks. As of January 2018, there are currently 126 active members of this group.
Protocolpedia allows sharing and storage of lab protocols.
Sci-Mate allows users to define access permissions, but can be used as an open notebook tool.
Vinod Scaria
OpenWetWare (hosts many laboratories and allows for selective sharing of information related to each research group)
Caleb Morse
Gus Rosania
Antony Garrett Lisi
Rosie Redfield, microbiologist at the University of British Columbia; all results discussed but raw experimental notebook is not exposed.
Martin Johnson, marine chemist at the University of East Anglia.
Greg Lang, post doc in David Botstein's lab at Princeton University. - shared on approximately a weekly basis

== Benefits ==
A public laboratory notebook makes it convenient to cite the exact instances of experiments used to support arguments in articles.  For example, in a paper on the optimization of a Ugi reaction, three different batches of product are used in the characterization and each spectrum references the specific experiment where each batch was used: EXP099, EXP203 and EXP206. This work was subsequently published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments, demonstrating that the integrity data provenance can be maintained from lab notebook to final publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Without further qualifications, Open Notebook Science implies that the research is being reported on an ongoing basis without unreasonable delay or filter.  This enables others to understand exactly how research actually happens within a field or a specific research group. Such information could be of value to collaborators, prospective students or future employers.  Providing access to selective notebook pages or inserting an embargo period would be inconsistent with the meaning of the term "Open" in this context.  Unless error corrections, failed experiments and ambiguous results are reported, it will not be possible for an outside observer to understand exactly how science is being done.  Terms such as Pseudo  or Partial  have been used as qualifiers for the sharing of laboratory notebook information in a selective way or with a significant delay.