Thinking about our recent posting  regarding project and document management, along with a number of postings on open source data, people might be interested in learning more about a movement that takes open source to a basic level.  As described in Wikipedia:

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’.

While not everyone thinks this is a great idea, a number of labs in a variety of disciplines have begun to embrace the concept.  Similar to the Creative Commons movement, there are a number of ways to implement open science in your lab (with associated logos, of course!).

So, does open notebook science have a place in biomedical research, and does it have a role in translational science?

Further reading:

• How to get started with open notebook science
• UsefulChem (the first open notebook science project)
• OpenWetWare (information sharing in biology)
• Does OpenWetWare go anywhere from here? (questions about the future of the movement)