How Long Should You Keep Lab Notebooks? Retention Requirements by Field
“Can I throw away my old lab notebooks?”
It’s a simple question with a surprisingly complicated answer. You’ve got five years of bound notebooks taking up shelf space in your office. Or maybe twenty years worth in a storage room somewhere. Some are from completed projects. Some are from research that never went anywhere. A few are from work you can barely remember.
Before you decide what stays and what goes, you need to understand the retention requirements for your field. Toss the wrong notebook and you could face serious consequences—failed audits, rejected manuscripts, invalidated patents, or regulatory violations.
Keep everything forever and you’ll drown in paper, pay for unnecessary storage, and spend hours searching through irrelevant old records.
This guide breaks down exactly how long you need to keep lab notebooks based on your field, funding source, and regulatory requirements. Plus, we’ll show you how digital lab notebooks eliminate the storage problem entirely.
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