Methods sections for scientific papers often include “shortcut citations”, where authors cite a previous paper describing the method rather than providing full details of the techniques performed. While this practice reduces word counts in the methods sections and avoids concerns about plagiarism, anecdotes suggest that it may create obstacles for scientists who want to reproduce the methods described. This project included three sub-studies designed to investigate different aspects of the use of methodological shortcut citations. 1. **Methodological citations study:** In this study, we examined reasons why authors cite papers in the methods section, and assessed how often methodological shortcut citations were used. The sample included papers published in top journals in three fields, neuroscience, biology and psychiatry. Additional factors assessed included the number of shortcut citations per paper, the number of citations listed within each shortcut, and the earliest and latest publication year among resources cited as shortcuts. **The prevalence study folder contains the search strategy, abstraction protocol, open data, open code and three figures displaying results for this sub-study.** 2. **Shortcut citation chains:** In this study (n = 15 papers), we consulted resources cited as shortcuts to seek out detailed methods. Results for each paper, including problems encountered that prevented us from finding detailed methods, were visualized using node diagrams. There is no information on this sub-study in this repository. Methods and results can be found in the paper describing results of this project. 3. **Journal policy study:** In this study, we examined whether policies for journals in three different fields (neuroscience, biology, psychiatry) encourage authors to use methodological shortcut citations. We also assessed whether journal policies encouraged authors to report methods in enough detail to reproduce the experiment, asked authors to describe modifications of previously used methods, or asked authors to include supplemental methods or protocol repositories to provide full details of the methods used. **The journal policy study folder contains the abstraction protocol, open data, open code and a figure displaying results for this sub-study.**