How you write your methods determines how reproducible your science is.

Picture a graduate student, let's call her Sheila, tasked with reproducing a key result from a landmark paper in her field. Now, the reagents are not clearly identified in the paper, nor is the exact version of the software used to analyze the data, which results in Sheila wasting months trying to follow in the authors' footsteps. This is clearly bad for our heroine, because she could be building on the key result she is trying to replicate, and extend it to new samples. However, we should ask ourselves: can we collectively afford this state of things? The answer is no, so we should do something about it.

At iScience, we are adopting the STAR Methods format, so reagents, datasets and resources will be easier to find, study power and statistics will be better defined. In our Editorial, we show why we are following Cell Press life sciences journals in adopting STAR Methods: it simply works, check out for example the rate of recognition for antibodies after adoption of STAR Methods and similar formats, from a study we published last year.

Since we are an interdisciplinary journal, ALL disciplines publishing in iScience will be held to the same standard. Structured methods formats are uncommon in many areas, for example in the physical sciences, and we believe this is a big step forward in improving reproducibility and replicability of the studies we publish, across the board.

We hope to hear your feedback on this initiative!