How to Use Notion as a Research Lab Notebook for Ph.D. Research

Notion is one of my favorite tools for organizing my research lab experiments, notes, data, and tasks! Notion is a free and premium cloud-based app that allows you to create highly customizable and visual pages and dashboards for keeping your life organized.

I first started using Notion in 2021 during my Ph.D., when I created the free Simple Graduate Student Notion Dashboard. As I learned more about using Notion, I developed this Research Lab Notebook template to keep track of all my research lab-related tasks, protocols, and notes, all while storing important information like literature reviews and data. This research lab notebook is an excellent Notion template for Ph.D., master’s, and undergraduate students engaged in research. Sign up for a Notion account here if you don’t already have an account!

This Research Lab Notebook template is only for organizing research lab experiments. I currently do not have this template integrated with any manuscript, thesis, or dissertation writing tools aside from literature review. But this template is certainly designed to be used and referenced during the writing process!

What is Notion?

Are you new to Notion? Here’s what Notion has to offer!

Notion is a freemium organization software that offers the ability to design pages, templates, and databases for arranging important information, creating lists, taking down notes, and more! Notion is especially beneficial for students since being a student involves extensive notetaking, project planning, and organization.

Notion offers much more than other note-taking apps or task trackers on the market. It allows you to fully customize your pages and databases so you can work smarter, not harder. Since it’s fully customizable, you can create pages that work best for you! Notion has an expansive gallery of templates where other users share their templates (either for free or purchase), so you can truly find a template for anything! With the recent addition of Notion AI, you can power your workspace with AI. I’ve enjoyed using Notion AI for summarizing, paraphrasing, brainstorming, and organizing my thoughts from my existing Notion pages. All you have to do is submit a prompt or ask a question and Notion AI will output a result! Notion AI is also seamlessly integrated into Notion and easily accessible on any page by simply double-tapping the spacebar!

Notion is a free tool but also offers premium subscriptions. The free version offers all basic tools for using and creating Notion templates. But premium subscriptions offer more tools and functionality for small and large teams, or even entire organizations. The free software is sufficient for individuals, but if you work on a small team, like with a research group, the Plus subscription offers features like unlimited file uploads and more! If you’re a student and plan on uploading a lot of files or documents into Notion for storage, you might need to upgrade to Plus to get unlimited file uploads. Notion is available across all your devices, so you can always access your Notion from your phone, computer, or tablet.

Sign up for a Notion account here!

Why do I love using Notion?

I’ve been using Notion for several years now and have found it to be one of the best (and most fun) software to use for note-taking and organizing. Firstly, it’s plain fun to organize and design your template! You can easily create your Notion aesthetic and design pages to fit your needs. I also love how I can use it across all my devices. It’s also very affordable for students, as there is a free version. And Notion AI is well-priced at just $8 a month.

Why should I buy a Notion template?

Purchasing a Notion template instead of making your own takes the work out of getting organized! With a ready-to-go template, you can dive right into organizing your Ph.D. without having to tinker with databases or create an aesthetic.

Research Lab Notebook Notion Template Features

What is included in the Research Lab Notebook Notion Template?

The Research Lab Notebook Notion Template includes

• Homepage with daily and weekly experiment and task trackers
• Daily lab notebook database for tracking the day’s experiments and taking notes.
• Project management database views so you can manage all your research projects in a single view
• Detailed literature review template/literature review database
• Data management plan page
• Protocols database that can be related to lab notebook tasks and entries so you never forget which protocol you used!

Research Tasks and Experiments Database – The Brain of the Notion Template

The Daily and Weekly Tasks and Experiments databases are linked copies of the “All Research Projects Tasks and Experiments” database, so I will start by explaining this database first. The “Research Projects Tasks and Experiments” database is where you can input all of your research-related tasks and experiments. Each task or experiment can be labeled with the project, the goals, the due date, and the status.

After you input this information, if the date is “Today” the tasks will populate the Today’s Tasks and Experiments Table. And if the date is “Today or within one week from today,” it will populate the This Weeks Tasks and Experiments Table! On the master Research Projects Tasks and Experiments database, you can create additional views by simply adding a view along the top of the database. I’ve included views by project, status, or the calendar view. The project view is beneficial when you want to look at everything you’ve completed for a single project.

Daily Research Lab Notebook

Now, once you’re in the lab and working, you’ll want to keep track of everything you do during the day! You can do this in the Research Lab Notebook. Here, when you create a new entry, custom template will be generated so you can begin planning and tracking your day! The “Tasks and Experiments” property allows you to link to the associated tasks you created in the Research Projects Tasks and Experiments database. This way, your tasks and lab notebook are always linked! In this column, you can link to multiple tasks and experiments in case you do multiple experiments in one day.

n the next column, you can similarly link to any protocols stored in the protocol database. And when you go back to your protocol database, you can see all the lab notebook entries that used that protocol! Cool right? Everything links together so you can easily reference your experiments, lab notebook, and protocols from multiple pages on this template. You can also use different views to visualize your lab notebook by project.

Protocols Manager

Literature Review Template

Like the protocols database, there is a designated page for reviewing literature! This database uses properties that will guide you through your reading, offers a space for file uploads and note taking, and a property for relating your entries to lab notebook entries and protocols!

I hope this template is helpful for you to keep all of your research notes organized in Notion! Let us know in the comments what other ways you use Notion to keep your research life organized!

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Learn more about She Science’s Notion Templates

• Simple grad student Notion template
• All-in-one grad student Notion template for grad school, personal life, and professional development.
• Ph.D. Degree and Dissertation Planner template

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