arsoc-topic-selection
Use when judging whether a sociology literature is an Annual Review of Sociology (ARSoc)-scale review topic — mature, broadly important, and genuinely in need of an authoritative cross-subfield synthesis — and framing the review's animating question. Decides fit; it does not gather the literature (arsoc-literature-synthesis) or pitch the Committee (arsoc-proposal-and-commissioning).
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill arsoc-topic-selection --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.
# Topic Selection for an ARSoc Review (arsoc-topic-selection) ## When to trigger - You have a candidate sociology literature and need to know if it is "ARSoc-shaped" - A topic feels either too narrow (a single-study debate) or too sprawling (a whole field) - You are deciding between ARSoc and a sibling outlet (ASR/AJS empirical paper, *Sociological Theory*, a handbook chapter) - The literature is young/fast-moving and you suspect it is not yet ready for an annual-volume review ## What ARSoc is for ARSoc is the **Annual Reviews** sociology survey series: a yearly volume of **invited, authoritative review articles** that are **accessible to sociologists outside the subfield**, not only to its specialists. The reader is a competent sociologist — a culture scholar reading the networks review, a demographer reading the race/ethnicity review — who wants to enter, teach, or locate the open questions of an area they do not currently work in. That cross-subfield reader profile, plus the annual-volume cadence, sets the fit bar. ARSoc covers the breadth of the discipline: stratification, culture, organizations, networks, race/ethnicity, gender, family, demography, political and economic socio
- When to trigger
- What ARSoc is for
- The four ARSoc-fit tests
- Decision table
- Framing the animating question
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
What does the arsoc-topic-selection skill do?
Use when judging whether a sociology literature is an Annual Review of Sociology (ARSoc)-scale review topic — mature, broadly important, and genuinely in need of an authoritative cross-subfield synthesis — and framing the review's animating question. Decides fit; it does not gather the literature (arsoc-literature-synthesis) or pitch the Committee (arsoc-proposal-and-commissioning).
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill arsoc-topic-selection --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.