MODULE 3 The Materials and Methods section

Section 1 Objectives and characteristics

By Mamadou Lamine Ndiaye (Polytechnic Graduate School of Dakar - UCAD)

and Emma Rochelle-Newall (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development)

This part of the course explains the objectives of the "Materials and Methods" section. It explains why it is
important that this fundamental section, which allows the reader to understand the results and is often a
reason for rejection, is well written. This part will answer the following questions:

How to respect the formalism of the “Materials and Methods” section.

How to present the general characteristics of the study as well as the data, geographical site,
meteorology, dates, experimental protocol and the sampling, observation, measurement,
processing and analysis methods and techniques.

In a scientific article, the "Materials and Methods" section often comes after the Introduction. In some
journals, however, it can be placed at the end after the conclusion. Sometimes, the Materials and Methods
section must be provided in a separate document.

Either way, this section is very important for two reasons:

Firstly, it should allow the reader to understand how the results of the research presented were
obtained.

Secondly, it should allow the experiments that led to the results to be reproduced by others who
may want to verify them.

If this section of your article does not meet these two fundamental objectives, it will be rejected - and
rejections based on these kinds of issues are unfortunately common.

In terms of content, the "Materials and Methods" section must provide clear and precise answers to the
following three questions:

What did you analyse in the work you are presenting?

What tools, methods and data did you use?

What were your assessment criteria?

1
 Objectives and characteristics of the Materials and Methods section

The "Materials and Methods" section describes the conditions of the experiment carried out. It must provide
a detailed description of the methodology used to allow it to be reproducible. It is therefore important to give
as much information and justification for the choices made as possible so that others can reproduce the
experiment and assess the validity of the results.
The aim of the Materials and Methods section is to:
Present the foundations of the article (often a reason for rejection)
Enable the reader to understand the results
Clearly explain how the work presented in the article was carried out.

The Materials and Methods section must:

Explain the purpose of the study and the data, location, date, techniques, methods and tools used
Allow others to reproduce the experiment and assess the validity of the results

The "Materials and Methods" section provides a detailed description of the methodology used to obtain the
results presented in the article as well as the conditions of the experiment, in a logical order, and the
assessment criteria. The section should only contain information that allows the reader to
understand the study presented in the article. It should be structured in a way that provides a clear and
logical explanation of how the work presented was carried out.

Conclusion
We have seen that it is important for the “Materials and Methods” section to be written with clarity, precision,
concision and logic. In the next module, we will look at the Results section and you will see that it also
highlights the importance of having a well-constructed “Materials and Methods” section beforehand.