ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

The Open Notebook

Imagine you have a notebook where you write down all your thoughts, ideas, and things you learn every day. Now, imagine if you decided to share that notebook with your friends or even the entire world, so they can see what you write about and how you learn new things. That notebook that you share with others is called an open notebook.

An open notebook is a website or a blog where people can share their research work, scientific experiments, or even their daily notes. It's like a virtual notebook that can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. The purpose of an open notebook is to make research and scientific work more accessible to the public so that others can build upon it or replicate the experiments.

People who maintain an open notebook usually document every step of their research process, from the initial idea to the final results. They may also share the raw data, graphs, and calculations used to arrive at their conclusions. By doing this, they make their work more transparent, so others can understand how they reached their conclusions.

An open notebook is different from a traditional scientific paper, where only the final results are presented. In an open notebook, you get to see the entire journey of the research work, from the successes to the failures and everything in between. This transparency allows others to learn from the researcher's mistakes and improve upon their work.

In summary, an open notebook is like sharing your diary with others, but instead of talking about your daily life, you talk about your research work. By sharing your notes and data, you help make research and scientific work more accessible to the public, so others can build upon your work and help advance knowledge in that field.