All practising scientists should keep detailed records of the experimental activities that they conduct, and for chemists, these records are generally referred to as “lab books”. Lab books take many different forms, including physical paper books and electronic lab book form. Lab books are also used in non-lab experimental work, for example when carrying out computational calculations.

Lab books will vary between individual chemists and for different types of work, but all lab books should share the principles summarised in the quote below:

Lab books are the definitive record of the work you carried out. Research is routinely disseminated to other scientists, and lab books are the crucial source in preparing work for scientific communication. It is important to get into good habits using a lab book to ensure that you have all the information required to be able to prepare work, whether for project reports, journal articles, posters or presentations. Missing information such as yields, characterisation data or records of the steps carried out in the lab are likely to make the results unreportable, and therefore work may need to be repeated to obtain the missing information.

As an undergraduate, carrying out scripted practical work (such as in Year 1 and Year 2), you will generally be following a printed practical script, which tells you the procedure to follow. However, the script is not a replacement for your lab book, as there is an important difference between them: the script procedure shows what you should do, while your lab book is a record of what you actually did.

Each practical you do is different, but the overall principle of the lab book is consistent: it should include enough detail to allow you, or any other competent worker, to recreate your work exactly. 

For project work, the same aspects of lab book keeping apply as for scripted work. However, a greater amount of preparation work is likely to be needed ahead of the lab session to plan the work which is to be carried out.

Work is generally recorded into lab books at three different stages:

• Preparation in advance of the lab

• Recording work whilst in the laboratory

• Analysis work following a lab session 

Lab books can take a number of different forms. Lab books may be physical paper books, or they make be in an electronic format.