Some conventions to consider

The most important convention to adhere to when keeping an experimental record is to be honest. It is an ethical document and all results obtained should be faithfully noted even if they don’t support your theories, what you expected to happen or what you think you your supervisors might want you to record. All results, even those from failed experiments, should be recorded.

If you are conducting an experiment as part of a team, it is best practice for each member to keep their own experimental record. This goes beyond one person recording information and other members of the team copying it down - there is little value in acting as a photocopier. Consider the case where you are investigating something that has never been previously discovered and you record a set of 12 numerical readings. Following the experiment, the processed data is showing a strange anomaly in one of the results. Because there is a detailed description of observations in the experimental record, the anomaly is either something interesting that warrants further investigation or a transcription error recording the instrumentation. If there are multiple independent records of the measurement, they can be compared to identify if it is a transcription error.

A lab book is an official document. It can act as a legal evidence, for example in patent disputes or to determine who discovered something first. Within industry, lab books may be permanently located in a laboratory and completed by different people. For these reasons, certain standards have become conventional when keeping an experimental record. These are:

• If it is your own personal lab book, it should contain your name and contact details, (and any other pertinent information such as programme of study, supervisor or tutor name) so it can be returned to you if you are lost.
• Black or blue ink should be used for writing. Pencil should be avoided, as pencil may fade with time and can be changed, reducing the credibility of what is written.
• Lab books should be close bound, so that pages cannot be added or removed, and every page is accounted for. All pages should be used. Unused whole or partial pages should have a line drawn through to show they are deliberately not used.
• When producing graphs, either put a circle around dots or make a sufficiently large cross for each data point to ensure they are clear.
• Do not write hurriedly. Do not use joined-up writing for titles and labels on graphs and diagrams.
• Give calculated results (but not data) to an appropriate level of precision.