What to Include in a Methods Section

The Materials and Methods section of a manuscript should extensively describe the technical aspects of the study. It is important to be very detailed in this section so that other qualified researchers may 1) validate your work, 2) reproduce it, and 3) develop the concepts further. Some journals will allow authors to deposit the specific protocols used in repositories such as protocols.io, or to include the details as supplemental material, but other journals require inclusion within the manuscript.