Adding new experiment in results and discussion section

Question

I'm writing a paper and found some straightforward additional things to do based on what I wrote in the Results and Discussion section.

I want to add a new experiment based on the findings and I am thinking about explaining the new experiment in the Results and Discussion section right away so that the narrative "flows" instead of rewriting the Proposed Method/Experimental Settings section (laziness is also a factor here). Is that appropriate or not?

Answer 1

If you add new experimental data to your manuscript and discuss them in the results and discussion section you also have to describe how you obtained the new data. That description should go into the experimental section. Please avoid adding too much experimental detail to the results and discussion section.

Exceptions are communications, letters, and other short article formats without different sections. Then it sometimes makes sense to include more experimental details in the text. But I am not a big fan of that, and it has to be critically evaluated in each case if it is really the best solution. Also in such cases, there is usually supporting information that is more suited for experimental details.

So you have to update both: The experimental section and the results and discussion section.

Answer 2

A reviewer will likely find that rather confusing. A possibility is to restructure the manuscript sections as follows (or similar):

1. Experiment 1
2. Results of experiment 1
3. Experiment 2
4. Results of experiment 2
5. Discussion

Indeed the above possibility depends on how much freedom the journal allows in the structure: in certain fields, journals leave the choice of structure totally to the authors; in others, journals may define a mandatory structure.