A skill your agent uses when scoping or framing a research question for a The Economic Journal (EJ) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "EJ-shaped" — a substantial contribution of broad…

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Ecj Topic Selection

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ecj-topic-selection -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills ecj-topic-selection --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/The-Economic-Journal-Skills/skills/ecj-topic-selection .claude/skills/ecj-topic-selection && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
ecj-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
682 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when scoping or framing a research question for a The Economic Journal (EJ) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "EJ-shaped" — a substantial contribution of broad…

  • Works in 5 steps: Broad interest — Would an economist… → Substantial contribution — Does it move… → Mechanism / economics — Can you state… → …
  • Tasks that involve Hypothesis generation
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, The EJ fit test, Full-length vs. the… and EJ vs. neighbors (route before…, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Ecj Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when scoping or framing a research question for a The Economic Journal (EJ) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "EJ-shaped" — a substantial contribution of broad interest to economists at large, full-length or short-paper. Diagnoses fit and frames the contribution; it does not design the empirics.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Research & Science, covering Hypothesis generation. The repository describes itself as: Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. | 覆盖主流期刊的… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Hypothesis generation

Example prompts

  • “EJ-shaped”
  • “/ecj-topic-selection”

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Broad interest — Would an economist outside your subfield care about the answer? EJ's defining bar is general relevance, not just field…
  2. Substantial contribution — Does it move understanding, not just add a data point? "First to use dataset D" is not a contribution.
  3. Mechanism / economics — Can you state the economic mechanism in one sentence, and does the paper illuminate why, not only whether?
  4. Craft — Is the design / model technically sound enough to survive a demanding referee? Broad interest does not excuse weak identification.
  5. Exposition potential — Can the idea be made legible to a generalist? At EJ, clear exposition is part of the contribution; an unreadable…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 932eb23. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Ecj Topic Selection loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 83 tokens; SKILL.md has 682 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~83
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills at commit 932eb23, republished under its MIT licence (© brycewang-stanford). 682 words, ~1,417 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/ecj-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
ecj-topic-selection
description
Use when scoping or framing a research question for a The Economic Journal (EJ) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "EJ-shaped" — a substantial contribution of broad interest to economists at large, full-length or short-paper. Diagnoses fit and frames the contribution; it does not design the empirics.

Topic Selection & Fit (ecj-topic-selection)

When to trigger

  • You have data or a result but not yet a sharp, broadly interesting economic question
  • You are unsure whether the paper belongs at EJ, a field journal, or a top-5
  • The pitch is "X is correlated with Y" with no mechanism, or a narrow result only specialists would read
  • You are deciding between a full-length article and EJ's short-paper (AER:Insights-style) route

The EJ fit test

EJ (founded 1891, the Royal Economic Society's flagship, published by Oxford University Press; editor-in-chief Francesco Lippi, verified 2026-06-20) publishes the full breadth of economics — theory and applied — for a broad international readership. Its stated bar is that a paper be technically well-crafted, make a substantial contribution, and be of broad interest to economists at large. Score the idea against these five questions before committing:

  1. Broad interest — Would an economist outside your subfield care about the answer? EJ's defining bar is general relevance, not just field novelty.
  2. Substantial contribution — Does it move understanding, not just add a data point? "First to use dataset D" is not a contribution.
  3. Mechanism / economics — Can you state the economic mechanism in one sentence, and does the paper illuminate why, not only whether?
  4. Craft — Is the design / model technically sound enough to survive a demanding referee? Broad interest does not excuse weak identification.
  5. Exposition potential — Can the idea be made legible to a generalist? At EJ, clear exposition is part of the contribution; an unreadable paper underperforms its substance.

If you score high on broad interest and substantial contribution (1 and 2) plus craft (4), it is plausibly EJ-shaped. If the idea is essentially "we ran a clean DID on niche policy P," it is a field-journal paper until you supply the general lesson and the mechanism.

Full-length vs. the short-paper (AER:Insights-style) route

EJ explicitly welcomes short papers in the AER:Insights style — <6,000 words and 5 exhibits (verified 2026-06-20). Choose deliberately:

  • Short paper: one crisp, surprising, well-identified result that needs little scaffolding; a single clean idea a generalist grasps fast. Do not pad it to full length.
  • Full-length article: a result that needs a model, multiple designs, mechanism evidence, and counterfactuals to land; or a theory paper with developed propositions.
  • A sharp self-contained finding buried inside an over-built full-length draft is often a stronger short paper — rescope rather than bloat.
Show full SKILL.md (291 more words)Show less

EJ vs. neighbors (route before drafting)

  • EJ proper: broad relevance + clear exposition; theory and applied both core; short-paper option available.
  • The Econometrics Journal (also RES): if the contribution is methodological/econometric with no substantive application, it fits better there.
  • JEEA / EER: European general-interest siblings; comparable breadth — pick on fit and audience, not prestige alone.
  • Top-5: if the result is genuinely field-moving and important, aim higher; EJ is the right home for excellent, broadly interesting work a notch below that frontier.

Contribution framing (do this before writing the intro)

State the contribution as a numbered set of claims, each tied to economics and broad relevance:

  • Claim 1 (the economics): what economic force / margin the paper identifies and why it was not obvious.
  • Claim 2 (the evidence or theory): how you establish it (model result, structural estimate, or credibly identified effect).
  • Claim 3 (the broad lesson): what the result implies beyond this setting — for theory, policy, or other fields.

Checklist

  • One-sentence question that a non-specialist economist would find interesting
  • The substantial contribution stated (not a data/method "first")
  • The economic mechanism written down and falsifiable
  • The broad/portable lesson stated, beyond the specific setting
  • Full-length vs. short-paper (AER:Insights-style) decision made and justified
  • EJ vs. The Econometrics Journal / field outlet / top-5 decision made
  • Contribution drafted as economic claims, not dataset novelty

Anti-patterns

  • A narrow result of interest only to one subfield — fails EJ's broad-interest bar
  • An atheoretical correlation dressed up with controls and no mechanism
  • Claiming novelty from a dataset rather than from an economic insight
  • Padding a single clean result to full length when the short-paper route fits better
  • Sending a purely methodological/econometric paper to EJ proper instead of The Econometrics Journal
  • Assuming a top-5-rejected paper is automatically "EJ-shaped" without re-checking breadth and craft

Output format

【Question】one-sentence, broadly-interesting economic question
【Substantial contribution】what understanding moves
【Mechanism】the economic channel
【Broad lesson】what economics learns beyond this setting
【Format】full-length / short paper (AER:Insights-style) (+ why)
【Outlet】EJ / The Econometrics Journal / field journal / top-5 (+ why)
【Contribution claims】1... 2... 3...
【Fit verdict】EJ-shaped / reframe / field journal
【Next】ecj-literature-positioning

© brycewang-stanford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in The-Economic-Journal-Skills/skills/ecj-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Ecj Topic Selection next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Ecj Topic Selection compared with similar skills
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Good QuestionRimagination/good-question3051 repos~4.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Claim-Driven Experiment PlannerzjYao36/Auto-Research-Refine1287 repos~2.3kAutomated safety check: NotesNone

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Questions about Ecj Topic Selection

What does Ecj Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when scoping or framing a research question for a The Economic Journal (EJ) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "EJ-shaped" — a substantial contribution of broad…. Ecj Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when scoping or framing a research question for a The Economic Journal (EJ) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "EJ-shaped" — a substantial contribution of broad interest to economists at large, full-length or short-paper.

When should I use Ecj Topic Selection?

Ecj Topic Selection fits situations like: tasks that involve Hypothesis generation.

How do I install Ecj Topic Selection in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ecj-topic-selection -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (The-Economic-Journal-Skills/skills/ecj-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/ecj-topic-selection in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Ecj Topic Selection in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ecj-topic-selection -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (The-Economic-Journal-Skills/skills/ecj-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/ecj-topic-selection in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Ecj Topic Selection in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ecj-topic-selection -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/ecj-topic-selection, .gemini/skills/ecj-topic-selection, .github/skills/ecj-topic-selection and .opencode/skills/ecj-topic-selection in your project.

What does Ecj Topic Selection need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Ecj Topic Selection is instructions for the agent only.

Does Ecj Topic Selection access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Ecj Topic Selection safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Ecj Topic Selection use?

Ecj Topic Selection is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Ecj Topic Selection use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.7k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Ecj Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Ecj Topic Selection: Hypothesis Generation (spacering-net/codeg, 3.8k stars), Nature Paper Card (Yuan1z0825/nature-skills, 46k stars), Hypothesis Generation (K-Dense-AI/claude-scientific-writer, 2.4k stars) and Good Question (Rimagination/good-question, 305 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Ecj Topic Selection?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,219 GitHub stars. The repository holds 2,387 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 27, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.