apsr-literature-positioning
Use when positioning an American Political Science Review (APSR) manuscript against the literature so it reads as a discipline-wide contribution. APSR readers span subfields, so the paper must engage the literatures they expect and avoid the desk-rejection trigger of "failure to engage the relevant literatures." Stakes the contribution; it does not write the lit review.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill apsr-literature-positioning --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Literature Positioning (apsr-literature-positioning) APSR's peer-review policy lists **"failure to engage the relevant literature(s)"** as an explicit **desk-rejection** ground. Positioning is therefore not throat-clearing — it is survival. The goal is to place the paper where a **general** political-science audience can see the gap and the move. ## When to trigger - Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph - A reviewer said you "missed obvious work" or "don't engage the debate" - Your subfield literature is solid but the paper doesn't connect to the broader discipline - You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior papers ## How APSR wants the literature engaged 1. **Engage the debate, not a pile of citations.** Identify the live disagreement or open question your paper speaks to. Cite the works that *define* it, including across subfields where relevant. 2. **Two audiences at once.** Satisfy specialists (you know the frontier) *and* generalists (why it matters). The intro should make a comparativist care about an Americanist paper and vice versa. 3. **Name the gap precisely.** Not "little is known" — say what is contested, mismea
- When to trigger
- How APSR wants the literature engaged
- Cross-subfield engagement (a distinctive APSR demand)
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
- Engagement depth APSR editors expect, by paper type
- Worked micro-example (illustrative)
- Referee-pushback patterns and the APSR fix
- Calibration anchors (hedged)
- Supplementary resources
What does the apsr-literature-positioning skill do?
Use when positioning an American Political Science Review (APSR) manuscript against the literature so it reads as a discipline-wide contribution. APSR readers span subfields, so the paper must engage the literatures they expect and avoid the desk-rejection trigger of "failure to engage the relevant literatures." Stakes the contribution; it does not write the lit review.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill apsr-literature-positioning --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.