Open Notebook

Open Notebooks for Everyone!

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How will it be possible to get all (or a lot of) scientists to have an open notebook or even just an electronic notebook? For me the answer is that it has to be easy, as easy as opening a paper notebook and jotting down notes with a pen. And to me the software that is as easy as that lies in the blogging world.

WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and other blogging software make it incredibly easy to start blogging right away. Each allows you to have your own space with seemingly unlimited bandwidth and storage (Blogger allows 1GB of image storge via Picasa, while Tumblr and WordPress have no end from what I can tell). You can put as much or as little effort into design as you want and are able to change themes/appearance on the fly quite simply. And to start a post you just click and type. Sounds like a notebook to me.

When I talk to scientists about electronic/open notebooks (which for this discussion will be used interchangeably), after getting over the fear of being online with your data, I hear about the time commitment necessary to keep an online notebook. The truth is that it doesn’t take any more time than keeping a regular notebook. And to me this is especially true if you use blogware as your notebook platform.

Think about it like this: if you keep a sloppy notebook you probably don’t spend much time with it anyways, and I would expect your electronic notebook to reflect that attitude. And if it works for you then great! To keep a well organized and maintained notebook obviously takes time, but organizing it electronically is actually quite easier. Creating tags, categories, sections, pages, etc is quick and easy and actually gives you some flexibility with organization because you can always alter it later.

The time commitment is exactly what you put into it, which is exactly how it would work with a paper and pen. And frankly it doesn’t matter. As long as your notebook works for you and you can create a trail from your data, to your methods, to your ideas, etc then you have yourself a successful notebook.

Why have I discounted other notebook platforms?

Well the other platforms are either not as simple to use or as accessible (which is more necessary for open notebooks than simply electronic). Wikis probably provide the most flexibility in terms of what you can do online, but the learning curve isn’t as slight as it is with blogging. And if we want everyone to have one then the learning curve has to be a slight learning curve. And we do want everyone to have one.

But I’m just one person with one opinion. Do I think blogging is the best for open notebooks? Depends on what you mean by best. I do think this could be an excellent large scale experiment (citizen science for scientists) and Andy Maloney and I have started it on the small scale.

Andy has been hard at work getting the students in his lab to get open notebooks. I’ve been working as well getting students in the lab course I TA to get open notebooks and my own undergraduate mentee (Alex) has a notebook as well. I’m also working hard to get others at CHTM and UNM to get open notebooks and to spread the word of open science. And the key to this is to get them to see that notebooking is easy.

And I think the key to that is giving them a few options with reasons on why those options work and why they don’t (since both Andy and I have explored a lot of options) and let the students choose. But the new notebookers need to know that they have the freedom to explore the software and other software as they see fit.

The idea is to see what students like best and the reasons why. The idea is to get their expectations to change as they notebook more. In the beginning you favor one notebook platform over another for various reasons and as you become more familiar with the software and your style of note taking you will begin to weigh the pluses and minuses of your choice.

I went through it. I started a notebook with OpenWetWare, moved to Google Docs, and finally settled on WordPress (self hosted). With WordPress I ultimately have the flexibility of the wiki without the revision history, but the organization is much better and with much less effort. But what works for you may be different, and I want to hear about it.

Here is a list of links to various notebooks that I am in some way affiliated with: