From jru-skills
Tests whether a behavioral or decision question fits the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty scope and helps reframe it as a risk/uncertainty primitive.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/jru-skills:jru-topic-selectionThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- You have a behavioral or decision result and are unsure JRU is the right home rather than a method-general or broad-behavioral venue
JRU's center of gravity is the economics of decision-making under risk and uncertainty: expected utility and its descendants (prospect theory, rank-dependent / cumulative prospect theory, ambiguity and Knightian uncertainty), the measurement of risk and ambiguity preferences, the value of a statistical life and other risk-money tradeoffs, and insurance, precaution, and intertemporal risk. A JRU paper's contribution is a sharper representation, a cleaner measurement, or a more credible estimate of one of these primitives — not merely a new domain where a known anomaly appears.
Use this triage before committing the venue:
| Your core object | JRU fit | If weak, where it likely belongs |
|---|---|---|
| A utility / probability-weighting representation with behavioral content | Strong — jru-theory-model | Theory and Decision (if pure axiomatics, no measurement) |
| An incentive-compatible elicitation of risk or ambiguity attitudes | Strong — jru-identification | Experimental Economics (if the contribution is the method, not the risk primitive) |
| A VSL / mortality-risk valuation or insurance-demand estimate | Strong — JRU's signature empirical territory | health/labor field journal (if risk is incidental) |
| A general behavioral anomaly (default effects, social preferences) | Weak unless re-anchored on a risk primitive | JEBO, JEEA, a field journal |
| A market design or equilibrium where risk is a feature, not the object | Weak | GEB, a micro-theory journal |
jru-literature-positioning if a primitive is named; otherwise return to jru-workflow to reconsider the venue.The Editor-in-Chief (W. Kip Viscusi) reserves the right to return papers that do not fit, so the topic decision is also a desk-rejection-avoidance decision. Papers most at risk of a fast return:
A team has survey evidence that small firms under-insure against rare disasters and wants to send it to JRU. As written, the object is a market outcome (takeup), so it reads as a field-economics paper. The re-anchored version makes the primitive the target: it elicits the firms' subjective disaster probabilities and ambiguity attitudes, then shows under-insurance is driven by ambiguity aversion rather than by misperception — a claim about a risk primitive that JRU's readership owns. The application becomes the setting; the decision parameter becomes the contribution.
The boundary is not "is it about risk?" but "is the contribution a risk primitive?" Use these one-line tests:
When two venues genuinely both fit, JRU wins if the primitive is the headline and the application is the setting; the sibling wins if it is the reverse.
resources/official-source-map.md or are marked 待核实【Journal】Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
【Skill】jru-topic-selection
【Verdict】fit / re-anchor / reroute to sibling
【Primitive named】curvature / weighting / ambiguity / VSL / insurance / intertemporal
【One-sentence contribution】<claim about the primitive>
【Sibling boundary】why not Experimental Economics / JEBO / Theory and Decision
【Source status】verified / 待核实 / not asserted
【Next skill】jru-literature-positioning
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin jru-skillsGuides authors in targeting Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (JRU) by assessing fit, framing, method/evidence bar, house style, and desk-reject risks.
Stakes a Journal of Risk and Uncertainty manuscript's contribution against the expected-utility-and-alternatives literature. Positions within risk/uncertainty scholarship.
Guides whether a behavioral/experimental/organizational economics paper fits JEBO vs sibling journals, and how to frame the behavioral hook.