A skill your agent uses when judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy or program question with a decision-relevant…

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Jpam Topic Selection

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills jpam-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/Journal-of-Policy-Analysis-and-Management-Skills/skills/jpam-topic-selection .claude/skills/jpam-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
jpam-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
667 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy or program question with a decision-relevant…

  • Works in 5 steps: Name the policy or program. What… → Name the decision. Who acts differently… → Name the credible design. Is there real… → …
  • Judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, The JPAM fit test, Field coverage (any of these… and Article-type fit, plus 6 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Jpam Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy or program question with a decision-relevant takeaway that reaches across economics, political science, and public management. Tests fit and sharpens the question; it does not design the study or run analysis.

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

  • Judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy
  • Program question with a decision-relevant takeaway that reaches across economics
  • Political science
  • Public management

Example prompts

  • “/jpam-topic-selection”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Name the policy or program. What concrete intervention, rule, or reform is being evaluated?
  2. Name the decision. Who acts differently if the finding is true — a legislator, agency, program
  3. Name the credible design. Is there real exogenous variation (random assignment, an eligibility
  4. Name the cross-field stake. Why would a reader outside the home subfield (e.g., a political
  5. Name the magnitude that matters. What effect size would change the decision? This anchors power

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

Jpam Topic Selection loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 90 tokens; SKILL.md has 667 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~90
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). 667 words, ~1,449 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/jpam-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
jpam-topic-selection
description
Use when judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy or program question with a decision-relevant takeaway that reaches across economics, political science, and public management. Tests fit and sharpens the question; it does not design the study or run analysis.

Topic Selection & Fit (jpam-topic-selection)

JPAM publishes work that evaluates real policies and programs and informs a real decision. The fit bar is two-sided: the question must be causally answerable with a credible design and policy-relevant in a way an APPAM audience (economists, political scientists, public-management scholars, and practitioners) recognizes. A clever identification with no policy stake is off-fit; so is an urgent policy question with no path to a credible estimate.

When to trigger

  • Choosing among ideas for a JPAM submission
  • A reviewer or colleague said the paper is "interesting but not really policy"
  • Deciding whether the work is a Feature Article or a shorter type (Policy Insights / Retrospective)
  • Unsure whether JPAM or a field journal (economics / political science / public administration) is the home

The JPAM fit test

  1. Name the policy or program. What concrete intervention, rule, or reform is being evaluated? "The effect of X policy on Y outcome" — not "the determinants of Y."
  2. Name the decision. Who acts differently if the finding is true — a legislator, agency, program designer, funder? State the counterfactual policy choice.
  3. Name the credible design. Is there real exogenous variation (random assignment, an eligibility threshold, a staggered rollout, a policy discontinuity, a plausible instrument)? If not, the idea may not clear JPAM's identification bar.
  4. Name the cross-field stake. Why would a reader outside the home subfield (e.g., a political scientist if you are an economist) care? JPAM rewards questions that bridge disciplines.
  5. Name the magnitude that matters. What effect size would change the decision? This anchors power and later the cost-benefit framing.

Field coverage (any of these is in scope)

Education, health, labor & welfare, housing, crime & justice, environment & energy, immigration, social policy, public finance, program administration. Domestic and international policy are both in scope.

Article-type fit

If the work is…TypeNote
A full, credibly identified evaluationFeature Research Articlethe core of the journal
A short, timely, decision-relevant takePolicy Insights (≤ 3,000 words, not peer-reviewed)confirm invitation/rules (检索于 2026-06)
A methods advance for policy analystsMethods for Policy Analysisroute to jpam-research-design
A reflective look back at a policy/literaturePolicy Retrospectiveroute to jpam-theory-building

Checklist

  • A specific policy/program named, not a vague correlate
  • A concrete decision the evidence informs, with the policy counterfactual stated
  • A credible source of identifying variation exists (not just controls)
  • A cross-disciplinary stake an APPAM reader recognizes
  • A decision-relevant magnitude defined up front
  • Correct article type chosen; home-journal check vs. econ/PS/PA siblings done
Show full SKILL.md (258 more words)Show less

Anti-patterns

  • "Determinants of" descriptive work with no policy lever (off-fit for a Feature Article)
  • A pure methods or pure theory paper with no policy application (likely a field-journal fit)
  • Policy relevance asserted in the abstract but never tied to an actual decision or counterfactual
  • Choosing JPAM because the econ field journals rejected it, with no policy reframing
  • Treating "topical" as "policy-relevant" — timeliness is not the same as decision relevance

Worked micro-example (illustrative)

"The determinants of college enrollment" is off-fit — descriptive, no lever. Reframed as "Does a state's automatic-FAFSA-completion mandate raise enrollment among low-income students, and at what cost per additional enrollee?" it names a policy (the mandate), a decision (whether other states should adopt it), identifying variation (staggered state adoption → heterogeneity-robust DiD), a cross-field stake (mobility for economists, administrative-burden for public-management readers), and a magnitude that matters (an effect large enough to justify the administrative cost). That is a JPAM Feature Article. (Policy/numbers illustrative.)

Calibration anchors (hedged)

  • "Timely" is not "decision-relevant" — a topic in the news still needs a concrete decision and a credible design to fit a Feature Article.
  • If the only path is selection-on-observables, the idea may not clear JPAM's identification bar; look for exogenous variation before committing.
  • When in doubt between JPAM and a field journal, ask which referee pool the contribution needs: if it needs a policy reader as much as a method reader, it is a JPAM paper.

Output format

【Policy / program】the intervention being evaluated
【Decision informed】who acts differently, and the counterfactual
【Identifying variation】RCT / DiD / RD / IV / synthetic control / none-yet
【Cross-field stake】why a reader outside the subfield cares
【Article type】Feature / Policy Insights / Methods / Retrospective
【Next】jpam-literature-positioning

Supplementary resources

© 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 Journal-of-Policy-Analysis-and-Management-Skills/skills/jpam-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

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Questions about Jpam Topic Selection

What does Jpam Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy or program question with a decision-relevant…. Jpam Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy or program question with a decision-relevant takeaway that reaches across economics, political science, and public management.

When should I use Jpam Topic Selection?

Jpam Topic Selection fits situations like: judging whether a research idea fits the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) — a credibly evaluable policy; program question with a decision-relevant takeaway that reaches across economics; political science; public management.

How do I install Jpam Topic Selection in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Jpam Topic Selection in Codex?

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

Can I use Jpam 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 jpam-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/jpam-topic-selection, .gemini/skills/jpam-topic-selection, .github/skills/jpam-topic-selection and .opencode/skills/jpam-topic-selection in your project.

What does Jpam Topic Selection need to run?

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

Does Jpam 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 Jpam 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 Jpam Topic Selection use?

Jpam 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 Jpam Topic Selection use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.8k 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 Jpam Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Jpam Topic Selection: Hypothesis Generation (spacering-net/codeg, 3.9k stars), Nature Paper Card (Yuan1z0825/nature-skills, 47k 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 Jpam Topic Selection?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,228 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.