Record keeping & sample tracking
The experiment-centred record: plan before the work, observations and deviations as they happen, settings, reagent lots, calculations and where the raw data live. An electronic notebook adds the two things paper cannot: a timestamp that cannot be moved and a copy that survives losing the original.
Our ruleSimulations prepare you for the bench but don't replace hands-on practice.
Lab notebook / ELN
The experiment-centred record: plan before the work, observations and deviations as they happen, settings, reagent lots, calculations and where the raw data live. An electronic notebook adds the two things paper cannot: a timestamp that cannot be moved and a copy that survives losing the original.
How it differs from the standard method
- Paper notebooks are bound and paginated, written in ink, with nothing removed and loose printouts signed in.
- An ELN keeps a version history, so corrections are amendments rather than edits and the original stays visible.
- Raw files are named after the entry and kept on managed storage, with the path written in the entry; figures are not a substitute for the raw data.
- Entries are signed or locked, and in regulated work witnessed, which is what makes the timestamp evidential.
- The record is the experiment
- Write the plan before, and the deviation after
- Why the lot number matters more than it looks
- Paper, electronic, and what the ELN adds
- Identifiers that survive being read off a frozen tube
- The freezer, the map and the alarm at two in the morning
- Chain of custody
- Key terms
- When to use it
- Sub-techniques
1The record is the experiment
An experiment that cannot be repeated did not really happen, and whether it can be repeated is decided entirely by what was written down at the time. The test is concrete: could a competent colleague, with no access to you, take your entry and get the same result?
2Write the plan before, and the deviation after
A record has two halves that cannot be written at the same time. The plan (the question, the protocol version, the expected outcome, the analysis) goes in before any data exist, which is what makes it a prediction rather than a story.
3Why the lot number matters more than it looks
Antibodies, enzymes, sera, matrices and growth factors vary between lots, sometimes enough to lose a band or a response entirely. When a result fails to replicate six months later, the useful question is which of the things that differed could explain it, and with both lot numbers in hand that is a single experiment: run the old lot against the new.
4Paper, electronic, and what the ELN adds
Bound and paginated
Written in ink, pages numbered, nothing removed, loose printouts signed and pasted in. Simple and durable; one copy, not searchable, and the date is only as good as the person who wrote it.
Immutable timestamps and an audit trail
Entries are versioned, timestamped and searchable; edits leave a trail showing who changed what and when; raw files attach to the entry; backups are somebody else's job.
Samples rather than experiments
Registers each sample and aliquot with an accession number, tracks custody, location and consumption, enforces the identifier scheme, and keeps an audit trail of every change.
5Identifiers that survive being read off a frozen tube
A sample identifier has to work in the worst conditions it will meet: a 1.5 mL tube at −80 °C, frosted, in a gloved hand, at two in the morning. Marker pen on autoclave tape does not survive that (the tape lifts in the cold and the ink comes off with frost, gloves and ethanol) and a label written only on the lid holds no real identifier and takes the identity with it if the lid is swapped during thawing.
6The freezer, the map and the alarm at two in the morning
An inventory is the only record whose loss destroys physical material rather than data. With box, rack, position, owner and date recorded for every aliquot, finding one tube takes a minute, a reconciliation is a report, and when the −80 alarms at 02:00 the boxes that cannot be replaced can be moved first.
7Chain of custody
- Anything clinical, regulated or from a consented participant needs a record of who held it, when, and at what temperature, from collection to storage.
- A gap in that record cannot be filled in afterwards, and an unexplained gap normally makes the sample unusable however good the assay is.
- Accession samples against the manifest as the box is opened: that is the only cheap point at which a wrong, missing or extra tube can still be caught.
- Never resolve an identifier mismatch by assumption. Quarantine the tube, raise a discrepancy, and ask the sending site.
- Only de-identified study identifiers travel; the link back to the person stays in the system that is entitled to hold it.
Key terms
Practise these as flashcards →An entry written as the work happens rather than reconstructed later. It is what gives dates, volumes and deviations any evidential value.
Electronic lab notebook: a versioned, timestamped, searchable record with an audit trail of edits and attached raw data.
Laboratory information management system: sample-centred software that registers accessions and aliquots, and tracks location, custody and consumption.
Registering a sample on arrival, reconciled against the manifest, which is where it acquires the identifier everything afterwards uses.
The record of who changed what and when. It is most of what distinguishes a tracking system from a spreadsheet.
An unbroken, signed and timestamped record of everyone who has held a sample, and under what conditions.
A scheme in which each aliquot gets its own unique identifier linked to the sample it came from, so freeze–thaw history and consumption are per tube.
A recorded difference between what was planned and what was done. Recorded at the time it is information; remembered later it is a story.
Checking a physical box against the inventory, tube by tube, and resolving every difference.
When to use it
- Every day at the bench: the record is written while the work happens, not at the end of the week.
- Before banking any set of samples, because identifiers, labels and the freezer map have to be decided before the tubes exist.
- When a result fails to replicate and you need a variable to test rather than an argument to have.
- When samples are clinical, consented, regulated or shared between groups, where tracking and custody are a condition of being allowed to use them.
- Before anyone leaves the lab, whose samples and records then have to be usable by people who were never told anything.
Compared with alternatives
The other half of the same job: the design has to be written down before the data to mean anything.
A cell bank is only a bank if the inventory, the identifiers and the passage records exist alongside the vials.
Strain stocks live in the same freezers and fail in the same ways when the labels and the map are informal.
Training records, incident reports and waste logs are the safety system's half of record keeping.
Sub-techniques
Choosing one here switches the whole page, including the protocol and the lab, to it.
The experiment-centred record: plan before the work, observations and deviations as they happen, settings, reagent lots, calculations and where the raw data live. An electronic notebook adds the two things paper cannot: a timestamp that cannot be moved and a copy that survives losing the original.
- Paper notebooks are bound and paginated, written in ink, with nothing removed and loose printouts signed in.
- An ELN keeps a version history, so corrections are amendments rather than edits and the original stays visible.
- Raw files are named after the entry and kept on managed storage, with the path written in the entry; figures are not a substitute for the raw data.
- Entries are signed or locked, and in regulated work witnessed, which is what makes the timestamp evidential.