Main concept

An open lab book is a tool for documentation of work, activities, shared by all affiliates of an OVN. It is designed and implemented in such a way that is fully compatible with the organizational and economic principles of the OVN. Firstly, it is a repository of information, but can be enhanced with other tools for matching, searching, forking and remixing, semantics, etc. Secondly, it is a backup of contribution logs in the NRP-CAS for projects and ventures.

The open lab book would be a great tool for academia, especially to support open science practices. In the academic context, the open lab book would blend the OVN model, allowing amalgamation of contributions and recognition attribution, with the idea of transparency in science, which is instantiated by open notebook science. It can revolutionize sharing of scientific and technical data, information and knowledge.

Source(s): The open lab book

Some important ideas

Electronic lab notebooks used for development or research in regulated industries, such as medical devices or pharmaceuticals, are expected to comply with FDA regulations related to software validation. The purpose of these regulations is to ensure the integrity of the entries in terms of time, authorship, and content. Unlike ELNs for patent protection, FDA is not concerned with patent interference proceedings, but is concerned with avoidance of falsification.

External links

There's a lot of literature about the ELN. Some people here compare wiki, Google docs, and ELN

ELN based on Drupal, On soundforge, Github

The ELNs developed to date are for specific purpose (biology, chemistry, with databases of chemical compounds per example). OVNs need to design a general ELN and interface it with the NRP-CAS.

History

This topic was discussed for the first time by Tibi, Bob and Francois, during an infrastructure meeting on Monday 26, 2012. This was in response to Bob's call for a leap, a new idea about managing R&D contributions.

Praxis

Sensorica's current practices

Project documentation: Each R&D project or venture has its own page on Sensorica's website. See venture list here. Moreover, each R&D project or venture has a folder associated with it in the shared database, which is publicly shared. This is implemented using Google Drive. The general overview with milestones is documented in a Main document. These Main documents are linked within the NRP-CAS (see below). Technical development is documented using R&D docs or Deliverables docs. Other type of docs are also part of the venture, for example those used to coordinate outreach and funding campaigns, dissemination/distribution, etc. The problem is that there is no systematic way to distinguish who documented what. Sensoricans have produced templates of these docs. These docs are seen as 'digital environments for collective intelligence-based and stigmergic collaboration'. This document provides an insight into this structure.

Contribution log: The Back Office Catalog is a ledger of contributions to a process. Processes are to be understood in the context of a project or venture, which are called contexts of work in the NRP vernacular. This is how different activities associated to different projects or ventures are recorded. The log also contains a short description of the work done, and can contain links to the Main document, R&D doc and other docs part of the project or venture. Anyone can go back from the time contribution log, reading the short description of the activity associated with a specific process, navigate to the docs and the website for a higher overview or contextualization. This movement from the log to the context is necessary for the evaluation process of contribution.

The problem with this system is that the context is separated from the contribution log.

Sensorica's new prototype

See our new prototype for R&D projects. This new prototype provides better integration between the time contribution log and the context of the contribution.

The open lab book

Contents