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Lab Handbooks

We advocate for the adoption of Lab Handbooks in academic research settings, to support an inclusive and effective research culture.

What is a Lab Handbook?

A Lab Handbook refers to a document (or documents) that set out the normal practices and expectations for working within the team. They help define a 'consistent and transparent way to foster an inclusive, supportive and productive group culture'.1

Not all teams implement handbooks, and for those that do, this can be done in a variety of ways. For our team we separate things out into three parts, in increasing order of detail:

  1. Our Team Ethos sets the baseline for how we work, and aligns us with existing institutional, national and international frameworks.

  2. Our Team Handbook (our name for our Lab Handbook) describes our vision in more detail, and describes the practicalities of working within the team - who does what? What are the expectations and challenges for different team roles? What tools/systems do we use within the team?

  3. Our Local Rules, Standard Operating Procedures and other safety documentation - these are the nitty-gritty, explicit details for working safely, and to a high standard of research integrity, within our laboratory spaces.

All team members are invited to contribute and suggest changes to all three elements above, ensuring that this isn't just lip-service, but a useful, relevant set of documents that help us study and work effectively, in a supportive way.

Why do we need Lab Handbooks?

Watch Stuart and other PIs discuss the value of Lab Handbooks during a Prosper PI session.

Lab Handbooks help define and support research culture within the team. This is particular valuable for onboarding new team members, either as new students entering a formal research environment for the first time, or for staff, given the considerable variation between how different teams operate.

Resources about Lab Handbooks

The University of York hosted the workshop "Enhancing Research Culture: Why Every Lab Needs a Handbook?", which again shares a different range of perspectives and ideas:

The University of York has also produced a toolkit "Interactice Guide to Creating Your Lab Handbook" to help teams develop their own handbooks.

Lab Handbooks

Here's a range of lab handbooks, lab manuals, ways of working, codes of conducts and other related documents below that we've noticed! Note: we don't necessarily endorse all of these policies, they are provided here for reference.

Lab Codes of Conduct

Meeting/Conference guides

  1. Prosper PI Network, 2025 ↩