![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jan. 9th, 2005 08:14 pmThe way these things are supposed to work, according to all the industrial labs where I've worked, is that everyone writes about their research as they do it, in lab notebooks that belong to the company. (Because the research doesn't belong to the researcher, it belongs to the company. It's work for hire.) If the notes on the research are a confused mess, because a particular bit of research is a confused mess, it's all supposed to be sorted out in fairly short order. One is supposed to go back over one's notes, and clarify the bits that make no sense, and sign every page, so the notebook will be a coherent legal document. Someone who is part of the company, and can understand the research, but has not done anything connected to the research, is supposed to read the notebook, to sign and date every page as a witness. The legal argument is that signed, witnessed, and dated lab notebooks are the most credible way to establish priority in patent disputes. In practice, if two companies try to patent similar ideas, everyone would rather look at preliminary patent disclosures or even internal memos. Slogging through lab notebooks, even signed and witnessed lab notebooks, is just awful.
Just in case they might be needed someday, researchers in my company are now required to keep proper lab notebooks. (This is part of our ongoing corporate effort to become a Really Useful Engine.) So, 2 weeks before performance reviews, the whole research department looked up with a start and began scrambling to pair off with appropriate witnesses. The group is small enough that there are never more than 3 possibilities, and some people need a particular pairing, to exchange notebooks with somebody who is distant enough from the research never to have worked on it, and still close enough to understand it without extensive explanation.
It didn't look so bad on Dec 29. We sat down for an hour in an empty conference room, reading and signing, asking each other about confusing bits. Then the same thing Dec. 30. It started getting more challenging when I came back after my vacation, and we realized that an hour a day wasn't going to be enough. I signed my name more than 400 times last week, and I didn't even get a house. My hand is really not up for this. Next year, we're keeping up with it every week. Or every two weeks. At least every month. Really, we should be able to manage every month. Or I'm going to get a signature machine, or something.
Just in case they might be needed someday, researchers in my company are now required to keep proper lab notebooks. (This is part of our ongoing corporate effort to become a Really Useful Engine.) So, 2 weeks before performance reviews, the whole research department looked up with a start and began scrambling to pair off with appropriate witnesses. The group is small enough that there are never more than 3 possibilities, and some people need a particular pairing, to exchange notebooks with somebody who is distant enough from the research never to have worked on it, and still close enough to understand it without extensive explanation.
It didn't look so bad on Dec 29. We sat down for an hour in an empty conference room, reading and signing, asking each other about confusing bits. Then the same thing Dec. 30. It started getting more challenging when I came back after my vacation, and we realized that an hour a day wasn't going to be enough. I signed my name more than 400 times last week, and I didn't even get a house. My hand is really not up for this. Next year, we're keeping up with it every week. Or every two weeks. At least every month. Really, we should be able to manage every month. Or I'm going to get a signature machine, or something.
