Agent skill

Revedres Topic Selection

by brycewang-stanford in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review or meta-analysis.

MITAuto-check passed

Install Revedres Topic Selection

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills revedres-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/Review-of-Educational-Research-Skills/skills/revedres-topic-selection .claude/skills/revedres-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
revedres-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.5k tokens
SKILL.md length
744 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review or meta-analysis.

  • Works in 4 steps: Importance to education. Does the… → Maturity (enough to synthesize). Is… → Need for synthesis now. What has changed… → …
  • Deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, The four RER fit tests, Choosing the review type the… and Positioning against the prior…, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Revedres Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review or meta-analysis. Tests fit and frames the contribution; it does not run the search (revedres-literature-synthesis) or write the protocol (revedres-proposal-and-commissioning).

Its SKILL.md is about 1.5k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

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

  • Deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review

Example prompts

  • “/revedres-topic-selection”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Importance to education. Does the question matter to learning, instruction, policy, equity, or educational contexts broadly — not just to…
  2. Maturity (enough to synthesize). Is there a real body of primary studies — enough that a synthesis can find structure, reconcile…
  3. Need for synthesis now. What has changed — an explosion of studies, a methodological shift, conflicting findings, a policy moment, or a…
  4. Tractable, defensible scope. Can the question be bounded into a search that is exhaustive yet feasible (clear population, constructs…

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

Revedres Topic Selection loads about 1.5k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 85 tokens; SKILL.md has 744 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~85
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.5k

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). 744 words, ~1,503 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/revedres-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
revedres-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review or meta-analysis. Tests fit and frames the contribution; it does not run the search (revedres-literature-synthesis) or write the protocol (revedres-proposal-and-commissioning).

Topic Selection (revedres-topic-selection)

When to trigger

  • You have a candidate review topic and need to know if it clears the RER bar
  • You suspect the literature may be too thin (or too settled) to reward a synthesis
  • A reviewer at RER is likely to ask "why does this field need a review now?"
  • You are unsure whether the artefact belongs at RER or at AERJ / AERA Open / Educational Researcher

The four RER fit tests

RER publishes comprehensive, critical, integrative reviews — not original empirical research, and not narrow stock-takes. Before investing months in a search, run the topic through four gates.

  1. Importance to education. Does the question matter to learning, instruction, policy, equity, or educational contexts broadly — not just to a sub-specialty? RER is read across education and welcomes work from any discipline (psychology, sociology, economics, etc.) provided it bears on education. A question of interest only to one method club fails.
  2. Maturity (enough to synthesize). Is there a real body of primary studies — enough that a synthesis can find structure, reconcile conflicts, or pool effects? Too young → there is nothing to integrate (a conceptual piece may still work, but say so). Too settled and recently reviewed → there is nothing to add.
  3. Need for synthesis now. What has changed — an explosion of studies, a methodological shift, conflicting findings, a policy moment, or a missing organizing frame — that makes this the moment? "No one has reviewed it" is necessary but not sufficient; the review must promise to advance understanding.
  4. Tractable, defensible scope. Can the question be bounded into a search that is exhaustive yet feasible (clear population, constructs, designs, dates, settings)? A scope you cannot search to saturation is a scope reviewers will call incomplete.

Choosing the review type the question demands

The fit tests also tell you which RER review type fits — and the type drives every later skill.

If the question is…The review type is…The contribution lives in…
"What is the average effect of X on Y, and what moderates it?"meta-analysispooled effect + moderator/heterogeneity story
"What does the body of evidence on X establish, by what designs?"systematic review (PRISMA, narrative/qualitative synthesis)the documented, reliable map of evidence
"How should we think about X — what framework reorganizes the field?"critical / conceptual / integrative synthesisthe organizing framework itself

Most strong RER pieces are explicit about type and hold to its standards; mixing a hand-picked narrative with a "meta-analysis" label invites rejection.

Show full SKILL.md (337 more words)Show less

Positioning against the prior review (the "second-review problem")

Because RER is the field's review-of-record, an editor's first instinct is "has this been reviewed already?" A topic survives only if you can name the nearest recent review (in RER or elsewhere) and say precisely how yours differs. Strong differentiators:

  • New evidence since the last review — enough primary studies have appeared that the conclusions could now change.
  • A new frame — the prior review catalogued; yours reorganizes the field under a model that reconciles its conflicts.
  • A methodological upgrade — the prior synthesis was narrative/vote-counting; yours is a documented systematic review or a properly modeled meta-analysis.
  • A scope correction — the prior review was too narrow (one outcome, one setting) or conflated distinct constructs that yours disentangles.

If you cannot articulate the differentiator in one sentence, the topic is not yet an RER review — it is a literature you have read, not a synthesis the field needs.

Checklist

  • Question matters to education broadly (not one sub-specialty or method club)
  • A real body of primary studies exists to integrate (or a conceptual gap is named)
  • A concrete "why a synthesis now" exists (growth / method shift / conflict / policy / missing frame)
  • Scope is bounded enough to search to saturation yet broad enough to matter
  • Review type chosen (meta-analysis / systematic / critical-integrative) and its standards accepted
  • Recent reviews checked — your contribution is distinct from them and you can say how
  • Confirmed it is a review, not original empirical research (which belongs at AERJ / AERA Open)

Anti-patterns

  • "No one has reviewed this" offered as the whole rationale — RER wants advance, not just coverage
  • Picking a scope so broad it can never be searched exhaustively (incompleteness is fatal at RER)
  • Picking a scope so narrow the result is a sub-field stock-take, not an integrative review
  • Labeling a curated narrative a "meta-analysis," or a thin tally a "critical synthesis"
  • Choosing a topic where the author's own program is the only center of gravity (self-promotion)
  • Reviewing a literature that was authoritatively reviewed two years ago with nothing new added

Output format

【Topic】<one-sentence review question>
【Importance】<why it matters to education broadly>
【Maturity】<size/shape of the primary literature; enough to integrate? Y/N>
【Why now】<growth / method shift / conflict / policy / missing frame>
【Scope】<population × constructs × designs × dates × settings — searchable to saturation? Y/N>
【Review type】meta-analysis | systematic review | critical-integrative synthesis
【Distinct from prior reviews】<the nearest recent review and how this differs>
【Next step】→ revedres-proposal-and-commissioning (write/preregister the protocol)

© 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 Review-of-Educational-Research-Skills/skills/revedres-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Revedres 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.

Revedres Topic Selection compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Revedres Topic Selection this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Synthesisyologdev/yoyo-evolve1.9k—~3.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
TopicsZimoLiao/scholaraio577—~294Automated safety check: PassMIT
Topic Modelingbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills4.6k—~3.7kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Five Questionsbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills4.6k—~1.7kAutomated safety check: NotesCustom licence
Bestblogs Topicginobefun/BestBlogs4.1k—~670Automated safety check: PassNone

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Questions about Revedres Topic Selection

What does Revedres Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review or meta-analysis. Revedres Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review or meta-analysis.

When should I use Revedres Topic Selection?

Revedres Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether a question is synthesis-worthy and RER-scale before committing to a Review of Educational Research (RER) review.

How do I install Revedres Topic Selection in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Revedres Topic Selection in Codex?

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

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

What does Revedres Topic Selection need to run?

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

Does Revedres 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 Revedres 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 Revedres Topic Selection use?

Revedres 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 Revedres Topic Selection use?

About 1.5k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6k 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 Revedres Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Revedres Topic Selection: Synthesis (yologdev/yoyo-evolve, 1.9k stars), Topics (ZimoLiao/scholaraio, 577 stars), Topic Modeling (brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, 4.6k stars) and Five Questions (brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, 4.6k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Revedres Topic Selection?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,231 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.