Academic Writing
Apply FINER research-question design, scholarly writing structure, citations, OA, preprints, CRediT, preregistration, and LLM disclosure workflows across papers and grants.
Overview
Academic Writing is a journey-wide agent skill that guides scholarly research design, writing, citations, open access, preregistration, and disclosure—usable whenever a solo builder must produce defensible research commu
Install
npx skills add https://github.com/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism --skill academic-writingWhat is this skill?
- FINER criteria checklist for feasible, interesting, novel, ethical, relevant research questions
- Research question type table: descriptive, comparative, correlational, causal, exploratory
- Coverage of literature reviews, grant proposals, peer review prep, and citation management
- Open-access routing under Plan S and 2026 OSTP Nelson Memo contexts
- Persistent IDs (ORCID, DOI, ROR), CRediT roles, OSF/AsPredicted preregistration, and LLM disclosure guidance
- 5 FINER criteria
- 5 research question types in reference table
Adoption & trust: 2.1k installs on skills.sh; 252 GitHub stars; 3/3 security scanners passed (skills.sh audits); trending (+100% hot-view momentum).
What problem does it solve?
You are drafting papers or grant sections without a shared methodology frame, so questions sprawl, citations slip, and OA or LLM disclosure requirements surprise you late.
Who is it for?
Grad students, academic indie researchers, and builder-founders publishing evaluations, theses, or technical reports that must meet scholarly standards.
Skip if: Pure marketing copy sprints or codegen-only repos with no research claims—skip when you do not need citations, ethics framing, or journal policies.
When should I use this skill?
Use when writing papers, literature reviews, grant proposals, conducting research, managing citations, preparing for peer review, choosing OA under Plan S / 2026 OSTP Nelson Memo, posting preprints, working with ORCID/DO
What do I get? / Deliverables
You produce FINER-aligned research questions, structured manuscript sections, and compliance-aware communication choices (IDs, CRediT, preregistration, LLM disclosure) ready for peer review or funder submission.
- FINER-aligned research questions and methodology outline
- Manuscript or grant sections with citation and disclosure placeholders
- OA, preprint, preregistration, and contributor-role checklist aligned to stated policies
Recommended Skills
Journey fit
Useful at every journey phase - explore requirements and options before committing to a direction.
Where it fits
Turn messy field notes into FINER-scoped questions before committing to a six-month study.
Define correlational vs causal claims you can ethically support in an MVP evaluation plan.
Draft methods and results sections with CRediT roles and preregistration links embedded.
Prepare rebuttal-ready peer-review responses and OA route checklist under Plan S constraints.
Publish a preprint summary with DOI metadata for AEO-friendly citations of your agent benchmark.
How it compares
Scholarly methodology and documentation discipline, not a casual blogging or SEO content generator.
Common Questions / FAQ
Who is academic-writing for?
Researchers, graduate students, and academics across disciplines who need structured writing, methodology, and communication workflows in agent-assisted editors.
When should I use academic-writing?
At Validate when scoping studies and grants, at Build when drafting methods and results docs, at Ship before peer review, and at Grow when turning rigorous findings into citable public content.
Is academic-writing safe to install?
The skill is instructional markdown; review the Security Audits panel on this Prism page and avoid piping unpublished data through untrusted agent hosts.
SKILL.md
READMESKILL.md - Academic Writing
# Academic writing and research methodology Systematic approaches for scholarly writing, research design, and academic communication. ## Research design fundamentals ### Research question development ```markdown ## Crafting a research question ### The FINER criteria - **F**easible: Can you actually do this research? - **I**nteresting: Does it matter to the field? - **N**ovel: Does it add new knowledge? - **E**thical: Can it be done ethically? - **R**elevant: Does it address a real problem? ### Question types | Type | Purpose | Example | |------|---------|---------| | Descriptive | Document phenomena | "What are the characteristics of X?" | | Comparative | Compare groups/conditions | "How does X differ between groups?" | | Correlational | Examine relationships | "Is there a relationship between X and Y?" | | Causal | Establish causation | "Does X cause Y?" | | Exploratory | Generate hypotheses | "What factors might explain X?" | ### Refining your question Start broad → Narrow progressively Draft 1: "How does social media affect politics?" Draft 2: "How does Twitter use affect political polarization?" Draft 3: "How does exposure to partisan Twitter accounts affect political attitude polarization among US adults?" Draft 4: "Does increased exposure to ideologically homogeneous Twitter feeds increase affective polarization among politically engaged US adults aged 18-35?" ``` ### Literature review strategy ```markdown ## Systematic literature search ### Database selection by field - **Multidisciplinary**: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar - **Social Sciences**: JSTOR, ProQuest, SSRN - **Communication**: Communication Abstracts, ComAbstracts - **Health**: PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL - **Education**: ERIC - **Business**: Business Source Complete ### Search strategy template 1. **Identify key concepts** from research question 2. **Generate synonyms** for each concept 3. **Combine with Boolean operators** Example for: "social media political polarization" Concept 1: social media - OR: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, "social networking sites", "online platforms", "digital media" Concept 2: political - OR: partisan, ideological, electoral, civic Concept 3: polarization - OR: division, extremism, "attitude change", radicalization Combined search: (Twitter OR Facebook OR "social media" OR "social networking") AND (political OR partisan OR ideological) AND (polarization OR division OR extremism) ### Inclusion/exclusion criteria Document your criteria: - Publication date range: [X to present] - Languages: [English only / multiple] - Publication types: [Peer-reviewed only / include preprints] - Geographic scope: [Global / specific countries] - Methodologies: [All / specific approaches] ### Managing your search - Save searches to re-run later - Export results to reference manager - Track number of results at each stage - Document date of each search ``` ### Citation management ```python # Zotero/reference manager integration patterns # For automated citation workflows CITATION_STYLES = { 'apa7': 'American Psychological Association 7th edition', 'mla9': 'Modern Language Association 9th edition', 'chicago': 'Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition', 'harvard': 'Harvard Reference format', 'ieee': 'IEEE', 'vancouver': 'Vancouver (medicine)', } # BibTeX entry template BIBTEX_ARTICLE = """ @ar