From jf-skills
Use when judging whether a research question is general-interest and economically significant enough for The Journal of Finance (JF), and when sharpening the framing. Tests fit and contribution; it does not design the empirics.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/jf-skills:jf-topic-selectionThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- Deciding whether a question is "JF-level" or belongs at a field/subfield journal
JF is the flagship general-interest journal of the American Finance Association (AFA), founded 1946, published bimonthly by Wiley-Blackwell, reaching 8,000+ readers across asset pricing, corporate finance, banking, microstructure, and household finance. With JFE and RFS it is one of the finance "top-3". The acceptance bar is severe: the editor's reports describe roughly a ~5% acceptance rate with ~33–45% of submissions desk-rejected (afajof.org editor reports, accessed 2026-05-30). A paper must matter to the whole AFA readership, not one subfield.
Before committing a scarce JF submission slot, score the question on the dimensions the editor actually screens for. None is sufficient alone; a flagship paper usually clears most:
| Dimension | Field-journal version | JF-level version |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | One subfield cares | Both asset-pricing and corporate readers see the stake |
| First-order-ness | A refinement of a known result | A first-order question the AFA membership debates |
| Magnitude | Statistically significant | Economically large (Sharpe gain, % of value, bps) |
| Credibility | Plausible design | Clean identification or a well-understood AP test |
| Durability | Period- or sample-specific | Likely to hold and be cited across cycles |
If the paper scores "field-journal" on audience or first-order-ness, the honest move is JFE/RFS or a field outlet — not a JF gamble.
Illustrative. Two anomaly papers land on the desk. Paper A documents a 12-bp/month spread in a niche segment (t = 2.3) that speaks only to short-horizon traders. Paper B documents a 45-bp/month spread tied to a mechanism — mispricing of supply-chain risk — that bears on the cross-section and on how firms manage real exposures, with a Sharpe gain of ~0.4 and t = 3.5 after adjustment. Paper A is a competent field-journal result: narrow audience, modest magnitude. Paper B is JF-plausible: a broad corporate reader sees the stake, the magnitude is large, and the mechanism gives reach beyond an anomaly entry. The fit test is not "is it true?" but "would the whole AFA room lean in?"
| Pushback at the desk | JF-specific fix |
|---|---|
| "Interesting, but for a field journal" | Surface the first-order, cross-subfield stake in sentence one |
| "Statistically significant, so what?" | Lead with the economic magnitude, not the t-stat |
| "This reads like a JFE submission" | Re-center the framing on the general-interest reader |
| "Hasn't this already been shown?" | Name the closest paper and the delta (jf-literature-positioning) |
【General-interest in one sentence?】...
【Contribution type】new fact / new mechanism / new method
【Matters beyond one subfield?】yes / no
【JF vs JFE vs RFS — why JF?】...
【Next step】jf-literature-positioning
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin jf-skillsScopes and pressure-tests a research question for Journal of Financial Economics manuscripts before data work begins.
Tests whether a research question fits the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (JFQA) before submission, evaluating scope fit and quantitative-evidence bar.
Evaluates whether a finance research idea meets the Review of Finance (RoF) general-interest bar, assessing first-order questions, empirical-theoretical fit, and top-three-journal referee standards before submission.