rt-ladder-ev
Use when choosing between submission sequences rather than between single venues — "should I try the top journal first, or start one rung down?", or when a tenure/job-market clock makes time-to-print the binding constraint. Costs a resubmission ladder in months and in probability of ever placing, using each venue's own turnaround and desk-reject figures. Follows rt-journal-match, which produces the ladder this one prices.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill rt-ladder-ev --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.
# Ladder Expected Value (rt-ladder-ev) `rt-journal-match` returns a shortlist and an order. This answers the question that order implies but never states: **what does that sequence cost?** Authors compare venues one at a time — *is this one worth a shot?* — and in isolation the answer is almost always yes. The cost only appears in the sequence, and it is a trade between months and placement probability that nothing else in this repository made visible, so it was settled by optimism. The size of the trade is whatever your inputs say it is; the point of the tool is that you find out before spending the months rather than after. In the [worked example](../../../shared-resources/journal-selection/worked-example.md), one reach rung costs about four and a half months and buys about four points of placement probability — and the sensitivity band shows the four points are not distinguishable from zero while the four months are. That shape of answer, rather than a winner, is the usual output. ## When to trigger - Two candidate submission orders and no principled way to choose. - A clock: job market, tenure case, grant report, a co-author's graduation. - A paper that has already been rejecte
- When to trigger
- What it needs
- What it does
- Hard rules
- Output format
- Anti-patterns
python3 tools/ladder_ev.py \
What does the rt-ladder-ev skill do?
Use when choosing between submission sequences rather than between single venues — "should I try the top journal first, or start one rung down?", or when a tenure/job-market clock makes time-to-print the binding constraint. Costs a resubmission ladder in months and in probability of ever placing, using each venue's own turnaround and desk-reject figures. Follows rt-journal-match, which produces the ladder this one prices.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill rt-ladder-ev --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 984 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.