# Time-stamped electronic lab notebooks submitted with the paper

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-timestamped-eln/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-timestamped-eln` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Electronic notebooks record when each experiment was done and what the raw result was. Submitting them with the paper would show whether the analysis was planned or fitted after the fact.

## Summary

Electronic lab notebooks are widespread but their audit trails are never shared. Submitting a cryptographically time-stamped export of the relevant notebook entries (or hashes anchored to a public ledger at the time of the experiment) with a manuscript would let reviewers verify the sequence of hypotheses, experiments and analyses, and would deter post hoc rationalisation.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Papers with notebook audit trails will show fewer discrepancies between planned and reported analyses and will be corrected or retracted less often.
- Rationale: Regulated industry research already operates under such audit trails (21 CFR Part 11); academia has the tools but not the norm.
- Proposed test: Pilot voluntary submission at one journal with reviewer access; survey reviewers on utility; compare discrepancy rates.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: engineering

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Preclinical results do not reproduce): Errington et al., Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology (eLife 2021): https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71601

## Connected records

- ideas: [Deposit the raw blots, gels and microscopy images behind every figure](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-raw-image-deposit/), [Registered reports for cancer biology: the plan is peer-reviewed before the result](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-preclinical-registered-reports/)
- bottlenecks: [Preclinical results do not reproduce](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/)

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