Materials and Methods
This section should provide enough detail to allow suitably skilled investigators to fully replicate your study. Specific information and/or protocols for new methods should be included in detail. If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references.
We encourage authors to submit detailed protocols for newer or less well-established methods as Supporting Information. Further information about formatting Supporting Information files, can be found here.
Methods sections of papers on research using human or animal subjects and/or tissue or field sampling must include required ethics statements. See the Reporting Guidelines for human research, clinical trials, animal research, and observational and field studies for more information.
Methods sections of papers with data that should be deposited in a publicly available database should specify where the data have been deposited and provide the relevant accession numbers and version numbers, if appropriate. Accession numbers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use. If the accession numbers have not yet been obtained at the time of submission, please state that they will be provided during review. They must be provided prior to publication. A list of recommended repositories for different types of data can be found here.
Methods sections of papers using cell lines must state the origin of the cell lines used. See the Reporting Guidelines for cell line research for more information.
Methods sections of papers adding new taxon names to the literature must follow the Reporting Guidelines below for a new zoological taxon, botanical taxon, or fungal taxon.