• A written record of research...'Institutional Memory'

• Conceptions, descriptions of how to achieve particular results, laboratory data and drawings should all be recorded daily on consecutively numbered pages.

• The entries should be in indelible ink. No erasures should be made (or possible, per the indelible ink); instead, draw a line through the text or data to be deleted and enter the material in corrected form. Initial the portion of the text that has been crossed out.

• All entries should be signed and dated by both the researcher and a witness at the time they are made. The witness should be someone who has read and can understand the material, but had nothing to do with producing it.

• Contents of laboratory notebooks should be treated as confidential and valuable.

• Notebooks should be stored in a safe place and any loss or theft should be reported immediately.

• A laboratory notebook is owned by the institution where work is conducted.  When a scientist leaves an institution permanently, he or she should be required to turn notebooks over to supervisors.

• In “first to invent” jurisdictions...Disputes sometimes arise over who was the first to make an invention, and records kept by the parties usually decide the issue.   In the past disputes raged over who first invented the telephone, the laser, the electric light and the automobile and in all of these cases the availability of records or the lack of records played a deciding role.