How do you keep track of your work?

[BlueRose]

So I'm going to be moving on in a few months, and making a fresh start in another lab. I'd like to use this opportunity to start better habits, especially in keeping track of and documenting my research. Right now, I have some degree of organization, but I don't think my systems are anywhere close to optimal.

Therefore, I ask the Internet Hive Mind to share its secrets. How much do you write in your lab notebooks? How do you organize your hard drive(s)? How do you track your samples? If you've got a good system that works for you, share it here!

If it helps, I'm both a lab person (experiments, samples, etc) and a computer person (giant datasets, analysis code, etc). Humanities people should join the party too, though; I know those fields have their own organizational challenges.

[HappyCat]

So I'm going to be moving on in a few months, and making a fresh start in another lab. I'd like to use this opportunity to start better habits, especially in keeping track of and documenting my research. Right now, I have some degree of organization, but I don't think my systems are anywhere close to optimal.

Therefore, I ask the Internet Hive Mind to share its secrets. How much do you write in your lab notebooks? How do you organize your hard drive(s)? How do you track your samples? If you've got a good system that works for you, share it here!

If it helps, I'm both a lab person (experiments, samples, etc) and a computer person (giant datasets, analysis code, etc). Humanities people should join the party too, though; I know those fields have their own organizational challenges.

I have a few methods (bear in mind, I'm an English lit. person):

Hard copies of journal articles etc. go into a three ring binder sorted by content of article (about a particular author, about a particular book, about a particular theme), then date. Oldest goes towards the back, newest in front.

Notes I write from library books/books I cannot write in go into a Moleskine with colored post-its indicating how it's useful (pink = ch 1 of my thesis, etc). Moleskine goes in the binder.

C:/Documents--Folder for classwork. Inside classwork is a folder for each semester. Inside each semester is a folder for each class. Inside those folders are my docs for that course.

C:/Documents--Folder for classes I'm teaching. Folder for each course (e.g. Eng 110), then semesters inside that folder.

C:/Documents--Folder for research. Folder for Thesis inside, divided by readings, chapters, etc. Also folders for misc. research and articles I'm working on for publication.

Also, I LIVE on dropbox.com. I can super easily access and back up my stuff on it!

You know, I never thought I was freakishly organized until I started writing all of this!

[communications13]

I lose papers too easily, so I try to be fully computerized. I use a little passport drive so I can carry it anywhere and easily share info with others.

I tend to organize in folders: by project; division of the product; then file name by date and a keyword if needed.

If for some reason it can't go on the computer, it goes in a hanging file, organized by: hanging file of one color for each project with regular folders of the same color for each division of the project; followed by post-it tabs of the same color with date/source keyword info.

[Eigen]

I use Endnote to organize all my papers.

Past that, I keep a lab notebook for my Synthetic work, and another notebook for my biological work. I record all my notes, observations, amounts, calculations, etc in these.

Each project I'm working on has a 3 ring binder with 5 dividers, in which I keep relevant notes, paper segments, and all the hard-copied data from that project (instrument printouts, spectra, etc).

When I reach a mid-finish point in a project, or segment of one, I type up all my experimental procedures, data, etc. I also try to do semi-regular typed progress reports with experimental sections, future aims, spectra, etc.

[was1984]

I've definitely learned the hard way to be meticulous with my lab notebook. I always thought it was stupid how they made us take such meticulous notes as undergraduates in our lab notebooks, but I've learned why.

Date your entries; number your pages; reference papers. It will eventually make writing so much easier.

Also, I like to number only the front side pages of my notebook. This allows me to use the back side of pages for scratch work. That way my scratch work is near the place where I formally note it in my lab book, but doesn't interfere with the organization of the 'formal' part of the book.

[Eigen]

I've also learned (from getting passed down notebooks that make no sense whatsoever) that the notes you make in lab books need to be understandable to someone else, without you there to explain them. Hence, designating what reaction/sample you're working on, brief explanation of mechanisms/theories, etc.

Also helps a lot when you're going back to notes that are 3 years old and trying to write something detailed from them.

[InquilineKea]

Hm, I often just put them somewhere that Google can index, and then google InquilineKea + "idea in the paper", which often brings up the old paper/idea. Alternatively, Gmail works too.

But in reality, I frequently lose track of the important stuff. CiteULike might help with googling though. As could Quora (when you forget the name of a paper, semantic-based search becomes important, and Quora's search is a bit more semantically based than Google, but still far from complete)

And now that I think about it, digitization is more important than ever. Google Desktop is still horrible at processing external hard drives, but an application that can do that is probably not far away (or already here). Semantic-based search is going to make finding things A LOT easier. And since academics have to travel a lot, it's kind of messy to carry more and more papers around all the time. One thing I do want, though, is a batch scanner that can process staplers, along with a reliable OCR program. If those two things can be done (along with semantic search), then maybe it will be super-easy to find old papers.

Edited July 30, 2011 by InquilineKea

[Genomic Repairman]

Dear ATGC,

How do we keep track of all the different threads you have posted this crap in? I think I need a LIMS system for that too, but I'm not paying $5k for it though.

Edited November 10, 2011 by Genomic Repairman