The structure of the methods section in research articles across eight disciplines

There appears to have been little previous research into the structure of research article (RA) methods sections. This paper reports a corpus-based analysis of the communicative move structure of 288 RA methods sections across eight disciplines: physics, biology, chemistry, environmental science, business, language and linguistics, law, and public and social administration. Preliminary examination of the corpus found seven different moves, though not in all RAs or necessarily in this order: overview, location, research aims/questions/hypotheses, subjects/materials, procedure, limitations, and data analysis. A number of interdisciplinary differences were found in moves and move cycles, including clear differences between the sciences and other disciplines. The existence of move cycles in methods sections seems not to have been previously predicted.