As explained by Jean-Claude Bradley in this excellent interview: The Pursuit of Automation: Open Notebook Science:
The difference between Bradley's idea and traditional open source projects is the clutter, i.e., all of the data collected from research. In a journal article, what the reader receives is a set of findings, published after peer review, along with the conclusions and basic data used to reach them. Bradley's project allows the reader to see the process unfold, from hypothesis to conclusion, with all data, experiments and notes that are collected along the way. This inclusiveness allows other researchers to better assess their own ideas, because not only do they have the conclusion and data used to support it, but also they have access to every failed or incomplete subset of data to use in their equations.
Very interesting post: I'd never heard of open notebook. I'm curious about other legal issues -- not about plagiarism, which seems like small beer if you're committed to open source, but about stability with respect to regulations. The US government has some regulations about things like electronic signatures, etc. -- do these technologies comply with those regulations?
Hermagoras,
You may be thinking about FDA and patent issues with respect to electronic signatures. This is certainly a concern for drug companies and their use of electronic notebooks. There are also certainly issues that arise when dealing with clinical trials and human subjects. But at this point we are just making compounds and running standard assays. If things do progress to animal testing and beyond, we'll be counting on people like Dan Zaharevitz at the National Cancer Institute to advise.