Subjects of interviews at The Open Notebook have included Rebecca Skloot, Kathryn Schulz, Ed Yong, Mary Heglar, Elizabeth Kolbert, Steve Silberman, Adriana Gallardo, Carl Zimmer, Ankita Rao, Nicola Twilley, David Quammen, Christie Aschwanden, Elizabeth Shogren, Natalie Wolchover, Seth Mnookin, Cynthia Graber, and Gabriel Mac.

[4]Gary Price of Library Journal said The Open Notebook "provides unique tools and resources to help science journalists at all experience levels hone their craft".

[1] Tara Haelle of the Association of Health Care Journalists wrote, "Perhaps the best science journalism site/blog out there is The Open Notebook, chock full of advice, tips, guides and inspiration."

She listed the organization of topics on the site: "Breaking In; Finding Ideas; Pitching; Story Planning and Reporting; Writing Accurately, Clearly and Engagingly; Fact-Checking, Self-Editing and Revising; The Business and Economics of Freelancing; Being Part of the Science Journalism World; and Looking for Inspiration?

[9] Topics include reporting on risk, reading scientific papers, covering preprint manuscripts, writing about disability, making freedom-of-information requests, being a science writer and managing a mental illness, finding and pitching stories to editors, negotiating freelance rates, and interviewing sources about trauma.

"[11] Articles examined through this series include works originally published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, National Geographic, Nature, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and other media outlets.

Spencer Davis wrote that the series "resembles the New York Times' s 'By the Book' column—which interviews famous personalities on their reading and writing habits—but with a focus on journalists".

[1] Writers profiled through this series have included science journalists such as Maryn McKenna, Virginia Hughes, Nadia Drake, Amy Maxmen, Helen Ouyang, Anahad O'Connor, and Rhitu Chatterjee.

Some alumni of the program include Tina Casagrand, Tiên Nguyễn, Aneri Pattani, Julia Rosen, Christina Selby, Jane C. Hu, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, Rachel Zamzow, Geoffrey Giller, Knvul Sheikh, Jennifer Lu, Shira Feder, and Katherine J.

From 50 entries, winners included dioramas depicting, in Peeps, NASA's Hidden Figures, a virology laboratory, the National Museum of Natural History, and other scientific themes.

[23][24] Contributors to The Open Notebook have included writers such as Nadia Drake, Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, Laura Helmuth, Kendra Pierre-Louis, Sharon Begley, Tasneem Raja, Michelle Nijhuis, Anil Ananthaswamy, Melinda Wenner Moyer, Shraddha Chakradhar, Tom Yulsman, Olga Kreimer, Roxanne Khamsi, Brooke Borel, Mara Hvistendahl, George Musser, Azeen Ghorayshi, Sandeep Ravindran, and Charles Seife.