From apsr-skills
Positions an APSR manuscript against the literature to avoid desk rejection for failing to engage relevant work. Helps frame the contribution for a discipline-wide audience.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/apsr-skills:apsr-literature-positioningThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
APSR's peer-review policy lists **"failure to engage the relevant literature(s)"** as an explicit
APSR's peer-review policy lists "failure to engage the relevant literature(s)" as an explicit desk-rejection ground. Positioning is therefore not throat-clearing — it is survival. The goal is to place the paper where a general political-science audience can see the gap and the move.
apsr-research-design).| If your paper is… | also engage… |
|---|---|
| an empirical test of an institutional claim | the formal/theoretical literature generating the claim |
| a country/region case | the general comparative theory it speaks to |
| a measurement contribution | the substantive literatures that will use the measure |
| normative/theoretical | the empirical work the argument bears on, where applicable |
apsr-submission)【Debate】the live disagreement / open question
【Key works】the 3-6 that define it (incl. cross-subfield)
【Gap】what is contested / mismeasured / untested
【Move】how this paper changes the debate
【Strongest rival】and how the design will adjudicate it
【Next】apsr-theory-building
Because APSR is the discipline's generalist flagship — the APSA/Cambridge venue read across American, comparative, IR, theory, and methods — "the relevant literature" is rarely just your home subfield's. The desk screen asks whether a non-specialist editor can see the debate; this table sets the depth that usually clears it.
| Paper type | Literature it must engage | The desk-reject trap to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| American-politics empirical | the general theory of representation/institutions it tests | citing only Americanists; "first to study district X" |
| Comparative case study | the cross-national theory the case speaks to | a country literature with no general claim |
| IR / formal | the substantive empirical work the model bears on | a model debate detached from political outcomes |
| Normative / political theory | the empirical or public-life stakes, where applicable | a purely internal exegesis with no discipline-wide payoff |
| Measurement / methods | the substantive literatures that will use the measure | method-for-its-own-sake with no consumer |
A hypothetical comparative paper argues that proportional electoral rules raise legislative responsiveness to minority preferences. Drafted for a comparative-politics audience, it cites 22 works, 19 of them on European party systems. An APSR-calibrated reframe keeps the core comparative cites but adds the representation debate Americanists own and the formal spatial-voting result the mechanism rests on — roughly 6 cross-subfield anchors — and re-states the gap as a contested general claim ("responsiveness is treated as institution-invariant; we show it is conditional on electoral rule"). The bibliography barely grows, but the contribution now reads as discipline-wide. (Counts illustrative.)
apsr-submission).../../resources/official-source-map.md — desk-rejection grounds incl. literature engagementnpx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin apsr-skillsPositions an AJPS manuscript against the literature while maintaining double-blind anonymity. Engages debates, stakes contributions, and anonymizes self-citations.
Positions a BJPS manuscript against cross-subfield, international literature so it reads as a contribution of wide interest. Useful when drafting introductions, responding to reviewer concerns about parochialism, or writing a Comment.
Positions a World Politics manuscript within comparative-politics or IR debates so the contribution reads as cross-case rather than single-country. Useful when drafting the introduction, addressing reviewer feedback, or building a review article.