sf-literature-positioning
Use when positioning a Social Forces (SF) manuscript against the literature so it reads as a contribution to a general social-science audience. Because SF caps the manuscript at 10,000 words including the reference list, positioning must be sharp and economical. Stakes the contribution; it does not write the lit review.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill sf-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 (sf-literature-positioning) Social Forces reaches a **general social-science** readership, so positioning has two jobs: convince a specialist you know the frontier, and convince a non-specialist the debate matters. And because the **10,000-word cap counts the reference list**, you cannot bury the contribution under a citation pile — positioning at SF is necessarily lean. ## 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 broader social science - You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior papers — economically ## How SF wants the literature engaged 1. **Engage a debate, not a bibliography.** Identify the live disagreement or open question your paper speaks to; cite the works that *define* it. Long reference lists cost you words you cannot spare. 2. **Two audiences at once.** Satisfy the specialist (you know the frontier) and the generalist (why it matters for understanding social organization, institutions, or change). 3. **Name the gap precisely.** Not "li
- When to trigger
- How SF wants the literature engaged
- Cite economically (the cap counts references)
- Anti-patterns
- What SF editors and referees expect from positioning
- Worked vignette (illustrative)
- Referee-pushback patterns and the SF fix
- Output format
- Supplementary resources
What does the sf-literature-positioning skill do?
Use when positioning a Social Forces (SF) manuscript against the literature so it reads as a contribution to a general social-science audience. Because SF caps the manuscript at 10,000 words including the reference list, positioning must be sharp and economical. 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 sf-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.