Expert guidance for reviewing academic manuscripts submitted to journals, particularly in political science, economics, and quantitative social sciences. Use when asked to review, critique, or provide feedback on academic papers, research designs, or empirical strategies. Emphasizes methodological rigor, causal identification strategies, and constructive feedback on research design.
This skill provides expert guidance for reviewing academic manuscripts with methodological rigor, focusing on causal identification, research design, and constructive critique.
Use this skill when:
Follow these steps to conduct a thorough review:
Before writing the review, consult these reference documents as needed:
Identification Strategy (Primary Focus):
Research Design:
Statistical Inference:
Theory-Empirics Link:
Follow this format:
Primacy of Identification: The quality of causal identification strategy is paramount. Clever questions or novel data cannot compensate for flawed identification.
Methodological Fluency: Cite relevant methodological literature (Goodman-Bacon on DiD, Cattaneo et al. on RDD, Hainmueller et al. on conjoints, etc.).
Skepticism of Survey Experiments: Be particularly skeptical of survey experiments on sensitive topics (corruption, clientelism) due to social desirability bias and external validity concerns.
Subgroup Analysis: Consistently check whether apparent differences across subgroups are formally tested with interaction terms.
Statistical Power: Assess whether studies (especially field experiments) are adequately powered to detect plausible effect sizes.
Use the reviewer self-checklist (in references/checklists.md) to ensure: