est-study-design
Use when designing experiments, sampling campaigns, or modeling studies for Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) so the design survives expert review — environmental relevance, controls, replication, mass/energy balances, and a QA/QC plan built in from the start. It guides design decisions; it does not run the study.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill est-study-design --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.
# Study Design (est-study-design) ES&T reviewers are demanding about whether a design can actually support its environmental claim. The failure modes are predictable: unrealistic conditions, missing controls, no replication, an unclosed mass balance, or QA/QC bolted on after the fact. Design to pre-empt them. Execution and reporting of results live in `est-data-analysis`. ## When to trigger - Planning a lab/mesocosm/field study, sampling campaign, or modeling experiment - Choosing concentrations, matrices, controls, replicates, and endpoints - Setting up the QA/QC and mass/energy-balance plan before generating data - A reviewer questioned environmental relevance, controls, or replication ## Design principles ES&T expects 1. **Environmental relevance.** Use concentrations, matrices, pH/ionic strength, light, temperature, and timescales representative of the target system — not only idealized lab spikes. Justify any accelerated/exaggerated conditions. 2. **Controls that isolate the mechanism.** Include the controls that rule out abiotic loss, sorption, volatilization, photolysis, blanks, and matrix effects — whatever could mimic your effect. 3. **Replication & randomization.** Biolog
- When to trigger
- Design principles ES&T expects
- Controls a reviewer expects, by claim type
- Worked micro-example (illustrative — designing the PFAS biotransformation study)
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
- Supplementary resources
What does the est-study-design skill do?
Use when designing experiments, sampling campaigns, or modeling studies for Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) so the design survives expert review — environmental relevance, controls, replication, mass/energy balances, and a QA/QC plan built in from the start. It guides design decisions; it does not run the study.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill est-study-design --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.