The art and science of record keeping

On the importance of proper record keeping during research

NOTE THIS: Ensure proper record keeping even as you do research.

Records management is like a staircase. You do not notice it until it is not there.

Keeping records systematically during research helps one achieve various objectives. It preserves data for future use. You may stumble upon something that may not be of immediate use, but would help you later. You have to keep the details in your files. Proper records of time schedules and activities are essential for the preparation of progress reports for satisfying your supervisor as well as higher authorities that hold the reins of funding.

 

Logbook

Such records may aid you when you are considered for a job by discerning employers in the future. It is a fine idea to maintain your own logbook that reflects what, when, how, and why you have done each item of your work. Major breakthroughs and special achievements have to be highlighted. Important discussions with experts and participation in meetings and your presentations have to be recorded so that they do not fade out with the passage of time.

 

Be systematic

Record keeping has to be systematic, whether using paper files or computers. In either case, unless you organise things with utmost care and discipline, you are likely to end up in chaos. You may not be able to retrieve the required information when needed. Classifying the material to be stored as facts, ideas, views and opinions, expert comments, new breakthroughs, quotes, journal papers, presentations, etc. would be of help. The same contents may be listed and indexed on some other suitable basis.

 

Bibliography

Another aspect that requires special mention, is the need for a working bibliography that contains only those references that you expect to cover in your thesis. You may at various stages of your work refer to thousands of web sites, journal articles, and books. Obviously all these are not going to find a place in the thesis. You have to apply your discretion in selecting only the essential references in your working bibliography. You may have to make frequent additions and deletions to keep the data updated in your computer file.

 

Be flexible

It is true that you should have a plan and schedule. But it is not prudent to prepare a total blueprint of your entire work. Conditions may go on changing, which may call for rescheduling or change of course.

There may be occasions when the entire roadmap has to be redrawn. What you can have is a provisional plan and timetable. Frequent modifications will have to be made.

Sessions of monitoring with your supervisor and necessary course correction can be done easily if you have some kind of graphical representation of your progress. In these days of computer graphics, this can be done easily.

 

Unexpected results

While you work on subjects involving laboratory experiments, you may land up with an unexpected result or a finding that is not in consonance with your theory. Such a finding should not be ignored. It may be pursued to some extent to check whether it yields some useful result. The history of science records several such fortuitous breaks that led to many classic discoveries. There may be a tendency even among normally honest people to cook up data for strengthening an argument. What Abraham Lincoln said years ago is still valid, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

 

Be honest

Even as a matter of policy, honesty is the best one. Never yield to the temptation of fabrication. Plagiarism in the form of copying data or findings from the work of another scholar without acknowledging the source and producing them as your own will certainly land you in trouble.

When you suddenly jump though unknowingly from one style to another, the reader will sense a jerk. Imagine the vulnerability of an ordinary writer plagiarising from a gifted master like Macaulay or Shaw. So also, ascribing a work to anyone other than the right author is not in tune with the ethics that should drive a scholar. ``To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research'' and "Originality is undetected plagiarism" are just streaks of humour, and never to be taken seriously.

When Shakespeare was charged with plagiarism, he was supported by comments such as "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

Shakespeare survived gloriously because he was Shakespeare. The unmatched genius was not plagiarising, but transmuting base metals into gold. Ordinary people like us attempting plagiarism will certainly have a different experience in life.

Keep in mind that no committee of experts evaluating your work would forgive you if you were caught for plagiarism. There is yet another side of the picture. Citing sources you have borrowed from actually enhances the credibility or your work.

B.S. WARRIER