It is the logical extreme of transparent approaches to research and explicitly includes the making available of failed, less significant, and otherwise unpublished experiments; so called 'dark data'.
The term "open-notebook science"[6] was first used in 2006 in a blog post by Jean-Claude Bradley, an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University at the time.
[40] A public laboratory notebook makes it convenient to cite the exact instances of experiments used to support arguments in articles.
Providing access to selective notebook pages or inserting an embargo period would be inconsistent with the meaning of the term "Open" in this context.
Unless error corrections, failed experiments and ambiguous results are reported, it will not be possible for an outside observer to understand exactly how science is being done.
While the degree to which research groups steal or adapt the results of others remains a subject of debate it is certainly the case that the fear of not being first to publish drives much behavior, particularly in some fields.
The second argument advanced against open notebook science is that it constitutes prior publication, thus making it impossible to patent and difficult to publish the results in the traditional peer reviewed literature.
If the current volume of the peer reviewed literature is too large for any one person to manage, then how can anyone be expected to cope with the huge quantity of non–peer-reviewed material that could potentially be available, especially when some, perhaps most, would be of poor quality?
The Open Notebook Science Challenge,[61] now directed towards reporting solubility measurements in non-aqueous solvent, has received sponsorship from Submeta,[62] Nature[63] and Sigma-Aldrich.