OnCo
ideasIdea

Time-stamped electronic lab notebooks submitted with the paper

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.

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.

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.
What would test it
Pilot voluntary submission at one journal with reviewer access; survey reviewers on utility; compare discrepancy rates.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
engineering
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks

Connected

3top