nanalLabs BlogYou film an experiment on your phone — does that count as a lab notebook entry? You screen-record a run — does that satisfy your record-keeping obligation? Search "lab notebook video recording" and most results give you one line: "the guideline allows it." Researchers who take that line at face value and keep only video or audio have run into "notebook not properly kept" findings during audits. This post walks through what Korea's National R&D Program Lab Notebook Guideline actually requires for format, and what "recognized" really means in practice.
Four formats the guideline recognizes
Since a 2022 revision, the guideline no longer confines the lab notebook to paper. It requires the head of a research institution to establish internal rules that allow notebooks to be kept in paper, electronic document (electronic lab notebook), audio, or video format, among others. That loosens what used to be an effectively paper-only default, letting institutions pick formats that fit their field or research style. For computational work where a screen recording of a run captures more than a text log would, or field experiments where video is more accurate than a written description, this is a real, practical change.
The real condition behind "recognized" — the institution decides, not the individual
Here's the part that's easy to miss. The guideline doesn't say "video and audio are fine." It says the head of the research institution "must establish internal rules" that permit those formats. In other words, the format is set by the institution, not by an individual researcher. If your institution's internal rules don't explicitly list video or audio as an accepted format, keeping only a video because "the guideline allows it" has no actual basis. As we covered in the three things Korea's electronic lab notebook guideline actually requires, the same logic applies here — whether a format is permitted is a question for your institution's own rules first, not the national guideline.
Why a phone recording alone usually isn't enough
Separately from format, the guideline requires institutions' internal rules to cover the recording date, the recorder's identity, and a mechanism to verify the record hasn't been tampered with. For an electronic lab notebook, a signature-authentication feature for the recorder and reviewer is a baseline requirement — and video or audio recordings are held to the same standard to count as a "notebook." A video file shot on a phone typically falls short on several counts:
- The capture timestamp (metadata) can be changed just by adjusting
device settings
- No edit or re-encoding history is preserved, so proving it's the
original is hard
- There's no equivalent of a recorder/reviewer signature step
- If the file sits on a personal device, there's no custody or access
trail that shows up in a management ledger
"I filmed it" and "the video meets lab notebook requirements" are different claims. As with why casually attaching photos to a lab notebook doesn't make them evidence, video and audio need a tamper-verification mechanism on top of the format itself — format alone isn't sufficient.
How this plays out in practice — replacing the notebook vs. supporting it
In practice, video and audio rarely replace the notebook entirely. More often, they're linked into a text-based notebook (paper or electronic) via a reference and timestamp.
| Format | Tamper check | Signature/review step | Common use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper | Correction history (strikethrough + seal) | Handwritten signatures from recorder and reviewer | Default format at most institutions |
| Electronic lab notebook (ELN) | System auto-logs revision history and hashes | Digital signature/authentication required | Computational and data-heavy research |
| Video/audio | Requires preserving the original file plus a separate tamper-check mechanism | Institution's rules must define a separate procedure | Field experiments, interview/meeting evidence |
The most common practical setup: keep the original video file in institutional storage (somewhere that shows up in the management ledger's access trail), and reference it from the actual notebook entry — "see video at [filename/location] for the experiment process, recorded [date/time]." That way the video functions as supporting evidence, and the text notebook carries part of the tamper-verification burden.
What to check right now
- Do your institution's internal rules explicitly list video/audio as an
accepted lab notebook format?
- If so, do the rules spell out a concrete tamper-check mechanism (hash
logging, timestamping, access-controlled storage)?
- Is there a recorder/reviewer confirmation step for video and audio
entries too?
- Are original files kept somewhere with an access trail in the
management ledger, rather than on a personal device?
- Do the rules clearly state whether video/audio functions as the
primary notebook or as supporting material for a text notebook?
If your institution's internal rules don't list video or audio as a format at all, whatever you're recording that way today is, legally, "reference material" — not a "lab notebook." Before relying on this, check both the guideline's original text and your own institution's lab notebook rules.