Helps determine if a development research question fits World Development journal scope or belongs in a sibling journal (JDE, WBER, JDS, EDCC). Tests relevance, audience fit, and methodological pluralism.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/world-development-skills:worlddev-topic-selectionThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- A development paper exists but it is unclear whether WD or a sibling (JDE, WBER, JDS, EDCC) is the right home
WD is a multidisciplinary journal. The desk-screen question is not "is the identification clean?" but "does this advance how we understand or improve development in low- and middle-income contexts, and will a multidisciplinary readership care?" Three things must be present, in roughly this order:
| If the paper is best described as… | Lean toward |
|---|---|
| Frontier development econometrics; the contribution IS the identification/method | Journal of Development Economics |
| Economics-centric, often Bank-data or Bank-policy framed, technical economics audience | World Bank Economic Review |
| Interdisciplinary but more political-science / sociological / area-studies framing | Journal of Development Studies |
| Long-run growth, culture, demography, economic history of development | Economic Development and Cultural Change |
| Broad development relevance, methodologically pluralist, equity- and institution-aware, policy-facing | World Development ✓ |
The WD-defining move: a paper that a development economist and a development sociologist would both want to read, because the problem and its implications outrun any single method. If only one specialist audience cares, reconsider the venue.
"A cash-transfer RCT in one district raises school enrollment by 6pp." On its own this is a clean estimate that JDE would judge on design. To become a WD paper it must answer "so what for development?": does the effect persist, who is left out, what does it cost relative to alternatives, and what does it reveal about the institutions delivering it? The WD version foregrounds the mechanism and the implementation context — the RCT becomes evidence in a broader argument about how transfers interact with local institutions, which is what makes it travel.
Run these in order; a "no" sends you back to reframing, not forward.
resources/official-source-map.md or marked 待核实【Journal】World Development (WD)
【Skill】worlddev-topic-selection
【Verdict】fit / reroute / sharpen
【Development stake】the problem in the world, one sentence
【Audience】who across disciplines cares, and why it travels
【Sibling boundary】why WD not JDE / WBER / JDS / EDCC
【Source status】verified URL / 待核实 / not asserted
【Next skill】worlddev-literature-positioning
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin world-development-skillsProvides fit assessment, framing guidance, method/evidence standards, and desk-reject heuristics for manuscripts targeting World Development journal.
Evaluates whether a research question fits the Journal of Development Economics (JDE) by testing topic fit, development stakes, and first-order importance for low- and middle-income economies.
Evaluates whether a development-economics question fits The World Bank Economic Review and helps frame it for both credible empirics and policy relevance.