When writing a paper should I describe the procedure thoroughly? I have not written any article on a chemistry subject yet, and I want to use good practices from the start.
What I have noticed reading papers, is that a lot of times it is not specified the exact procedure that is followed in a reaction, for example by saying the exact tools that are used, or the parameters used in a technique, not even in supporting information documents.
At first I thought that some information was not really relevant, but as I read more articles I found more things like “X product is centrifugated” or “Y is sonicated”, without further detailing the exact procedure that was followed, the set parameters or even the devices that were used, which can obviously be very important for a given reaction.
My opinion would be that the more information the better and I think that by omitting that information you are wasting time and resources to any researcher that tries to replicate your experiment, as well as making it difficult to check the replicability of the procedure.
Then my question is, how far should I go in describing the procedure? Should I mention even which glassware I use for a given reaction? Maybe sometimes it is pretty obvious what should be used, but it is additional information that does not hurt to know and may be useful for obtaining the exact same results. However, it is as far as I have seen not a common practice and there must be a reason behind that.
Maybe omitting this information is preferable in articles as it uses less words and it avoids making articles excessively wrong, if that is the case, what about reports or thesis with a less restricting length limits?
Thank you for your time.
Use the following criterion in mind when you write a method in a paper: If you were reading this synthesis procedure from a book or a paper, could you replicate it or not? Do you feel anything is missing for proper duplication? When I review a methodology section of a papwe, I keep this criterion in mind: &quot;Using this written information, can I reproduce his/her work?&quot;, otherwise I ask for more information.
Since you mentioned synthesis, a good sample procedure could be from Organic Synthesis http://www.orgsyn.org/
See how they write good procedures, and these methods are verified by independent person. Additionally, some journal put restrictions on word count, but still you want more details. For that, Supporting Information file exists on most good quality journals. I once saw someone even added pictures of their synthetic procedure/apparatus. Nobody will mind but it is not common.
Odd cases: Mentioning the source of glassware might be important if glassware surface were affecting the reaction. I &quot;re-discovered&quot; this only once. Sometimes the age of a solvents might affect the reaction. Tetrahydrofuran when used a solvent can have traces of peroxide which can show new unexpected products.
Now, there is a trend these days to intentionally hide some information so that competitor's cannot catch up with your work or write the method in a sloppy bare minimum way. This is really sinister but it happens and such practices must be curbed. Ayway scientists are not saints-they are human beings like everyone.