[SOA] Open access: Online repository for lab notebooks - Nature

[Shannon Bohle]

My correspondence, "Open access: Online repository for lab notebooks," is published in this week's print issue of Nature. 

The full-text can be previewed here: http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/506159e 
Regular link: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/506159e.html 

Background:

 
Back in 2009, I presented on “Laboratory Notebooks” in “Preserving Digital Research Data in the Health Sciences” at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists and the Council of State Archivists in Austin, Texas. The instructors / speakers were Nancy McCall (Chair), Archivist at Johns Hopkins University; Jeremy M. Norman of Jeremy M. Norman & Co., Inc.; Nancy J Melley, Director for Technology Initiatives at the National Archives and Records Administration; and myself. That was in addition to talks I have given at the University of Oxford (2008) and the University of Cambridge (2012) on the same subject of the preservation of and access to laboratory notebooks in the sciences. 

As they say, timing is everything. Right now, the issue of the preservation of and access to scientific and medical laboratory notebooks is gaining national attention at the highest levels.

The "Big Data" deluge and the "reproducibility crisis" are simultaneously creating a "perfect storm" in the sciences, particularly in the health sciences. It may just bring about a paradigm shift in the foundations of the scientific method itself, creating a burgeoning computational science approach with its own set of rules and pitfalls. 


White House Meeting of the President's Science Advisors: 

Members of The White House President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), John P. Holdren who directs the OSTP, as well as the Editors-in-Chief of the prestigious journals Science and Nature, debated this issue recently, citing the importance of a variety of factors, including lab notebooks, for fixing the problem of scientific irreproducibility. In particular, the individual whose study at the biopharmaceutical company, AMGEN, brought the problem to the public's attention--and was written about in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes,Nature, Science, PLOS One, New Scientist, and other prominent publications--testified that if research could be proven as reproducible that it would save money for patent filers whose products might not otherwise "stand the test of time" and it would also encourage venture capitalists and spur U.S. economic growth by inspiring confidence in newly patented innovations. 

Four Part Article Series:

In "A Four Part Series on Open Notebook Science" published in association with Nature.com, I examine the role of (electronic) laboratory notebooks in the 21st century. Scientists use their lab notebooks at the time of designing and performing lab experiments and they are a record of the scientists' thoughts and experimental details (in some cases including raw data) about their experiments, enabling reproducibility later.

Part 1: Why Reproducibility, Not Peer Review, is the Gold Standard in Science
http://www.scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries/a-four-part-series-on-open-notebook-science-part-1

Part 2: Laboratory Notebooks and U.S. Law: Patents, The America Invents Act, and the Open Access Mandate
http://www.scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries/a-four-part-series-on-open-notebook-science-part-2-2

Part 3: Debating the Future of Open Notebooks Science: Infrastructure Models 
http://www.scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries/a-four-part-series-on-open-notebook-science-part-three

Part 4: PCAST, OSTP, and Journal Editors-in-Chief Look for Solutions; A Call to Action and an Archival Petition 
http://www.scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries/a-four-part-series-on-open-notebook-science-part-4

It is an important yet complex issue. Your thoughts, comments, and opinions are welcomed.

Please consider signing this non-partisan petition:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/mandate-open-access-digital-copies-lab-notebooks-created-through-publicly-funded-research-leading-us/pxcKm2FS


Shannon Bohle, BA, MLIS, CDS (Cantab), FRAS, AHIP
@ SciMedLibraries
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