1 A brief description about materials and methods. Materials and methods section is also called the Procedures section. Often in field-based studies, there is a need to describe the study area in greater detail than is possible in the Introduction. Authors will describe the study region in general terms in the Introduction and then describe the study site and climate in detail in the Materials and Methods section. So the main purpose of the Materials and Methods section is to provide enough detail for a competent worker to repeat your study and reproduce the results. The scientific method requires that your results be reproducible, and you must provide a basis for repetition of the study by others. Since theses, reports and papers are likely to be used by your successors in the lab and by other scientists, as sourcebooks of methods, it is important that procedures are well documented and that details are correct. Once you've left the lab, it might be possible to fill in missing information by asking your supervisor or one of your former colleagues, but this is not such an easy option for someone across the Atlantic who is struggling to repeat your work.
The Materials and Methods section describes your experiment in such a way that it may be repeated exactly. The majority of the information is this section comes from the Procedures section of the experiment, but in the paper, this information should not be a list of steps. Write the Materials and Methods section in paragraph format in past tense. Be sure to include levels of treatment, numbers of replications, and control treatments. If you are working with living organisms, include the species of organism and the sex of the organism if that information is relevant to the experiment. Do not include failed attempts unless the technique used may be tried by other investigators. Do not try to justify your procedures in this section.
Here you describe how you did your experiments and analyzed your results. This is the easiest section to write, and is generally done first. In fact, one of the most common mistakes is for authors of theses and papers to quote irrelevant information, while missing out the essential details.
The purpose of these notes is to help you decide what is, and what is not, important information. Show your materials and methods section to a colleague. Ask if they would have difficulty in repeating your study. The sub-headings "Study Site", "General Methods" and "Analysis" may be useful, in that order. Be careful to reference as much in this section as reasonable, and be sure that all references are correct and complete. Explain how you studied the problem, which should follow logically from the aims. Depending on the kind of data, this section may contain subsections on experimental details, materials used, data collection/sources, analytical or statistical techniques employed, study area, etc. Provide enough detail for the reader to reproduce what you did. Include flowcharts, maps or tables if they aid clarity or brevity. Answer the question "what steps did I follow?" but do not include results yet. HINT: Writing papers can go more easily if you write this section first. It can help to get you started and keep from being intimidated by the blank computer screen. Most of all, this section should be organized carefully or the reader will get lost in the details. Also, omit any information that does not directly refer to the results presented. Often writers find this section the easiest to write and therefore it is a good place to start.
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