lancet-fit
Use when scoping a project and before any writing, to stress-test whether a study clears The Lancet's bar — clinically or public-health important, globally relevant, and likely to change practice or policy, often with an equity lens. Decides The Lancet vs a Lancet family title vs another general medical journal.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill lancet-fit --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.
# Scope & Significance Fit (lancet-fit) ## Why this is skill #1 The Lancet triages **most submissions to rejection without external review**. The gate is not "is the trial sound" — it is **"is this clinically or public-health important, globally relevant, and likely to change practice or policy."** A rigorous single-centre confirmatory study is rejected if it does not move practice for a broadly relevant problem. Run this before investing in prose. ## When to trigger - Before drafting, to decide if The Lancet is even the right venue. - When a co-investigator says "this is a Lancet paper" and you need a sober second opinion. - When choosing among The Lancet, the Lancet family, NEJM/JAMA/BMJ, and a specialty journal. ## The Lancet bar (four lenses) A strong Lancet paper usually scores on most of these: 1. **Clinical / public-health importance** — affects a common or high-burden condition, or a decision clinicians/policymakers actually face. 2. **Global relevance** — matters beyond a single high-income setting; ideally international or low/middle-income-country (LMIC) data, or a lesson that generalises globally. 3. **Practice- or policy-changing** — the result should alter a guideline
- Why this is skill #1
- When to trigger
- The Lancet bar (four lenses)
- Significance ladder (weak → strong)
- Fatal triage triggers
- Venue routing (within and beyond the Lancet family)
- Worked micro-example (illustrative numbers — not real data)
- Reviewer / editor-pushback patterns and the venue-specific fix
- Output format
- Anti-patterns
What does the lancet-fit skill do?
Use when scoping a project and before any writing, to stress-test whether a study clears The Lancet's bar — clinically or public-health important, globally relevant, and likely to change practice or policy, often with an equity lens. Decides The Lancet vs a Lancet family title vs another general medical journal.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill lancet-fit --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.