Menu

Individual skill

ecj-referee-strategy

0upvotes

Use when running a pre-submission pre-mortem on a The Economic Journal (EJ) manuscript to anticipate the broad-interest, identification, and mechanism objections a demanding general-interest referee will raise. Builds the threat list and pre-empts it; it does not write the R&R response (see ecj-rebuttal).

The-Economic-Journal-Skills/skills/ecj-referee-strategy/SKILL.md

Read pinned source

Source commit 932eb23331721b16e967c59f093781be1928b498

What was checked

Matches the observed repository HEAD
Yes
Scanner rules are current
Yes
Repository scan complete
No
Skill scan complete
Yes
Observed behavior
Network or broad shell
Last checked
Nov 9, 2026

These are observations at the recorded commit, not a guarantee of safety. Review the source before running it.

Install this skill

Choose an agent in your Stack or copy a command below. Commands fetch the pinned commit and copy only this skill directory. Existing destinations are refused. Copying a command does not install anything.

An install command is unavailable: current rules, complete repository and skill scans, an eligible behavior level and a permitted license are required.

Repository context

Repository stars (not skill ratings)
1,403
Repository last updated
Sep 27, 2026
License
MIT

Observed agent integration: No specific integration evidence. Standard SKILL.md installation does not imply verified compatibility.

Files and excerpt

File metadata and permitted, redacted excerpts come from the recorded scan. Source links are pinned to that commit.

Browse files
Read excerpt

# Referee Strategy & Pre-Mortem (ecj-referee-strategy)

## When to trigger

- Identification, model, and robustness are in place and you want to harden the paper before submitting
- You want to anticipate the report rather than react to it
- You sense a likely objection but have not addressed it in the text
- You are choosing how to frame the contribution to survive a demanding general-interest referee

## How EJ referees read

EJ referees read the paper as an **economic argument for a broad audience** and probe two things: is it credible, and is it of **broad interest** to economists at large? The prototypical EJ referee asks "so what — why should the wider profession care?" as hard as "is this identified?". They are unimpressed by a clean coefficient with no economic meaning or no general relevance, and they will name the alternative mechanism or the over-claimed generality. EJ review is **single-blind** (referees know who you are; you do not know them; verified 2026-06-20), so do not anonymize. Anticipating these objections is worth more than any extra robustness table, because a single unanswered first-order objection — especially "this is too narrow for EJ" — sinks the paper.

## The objection taxonomy (pre-empt each in the text)
Back to top