Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
› jacs-scope-fit
jacs-scope-fit
GitHub评估化学成果是否适合发表在JACS或专业子刊，依据广泛兴趣与严谨性进行判断。提供期刊选择决策表及Article/Communication格式建议，不改进化学内容本身。
Trigger Scenarios
不确定JACS是否为合适投稿目标时
需验证成果是否达到JACS水平时
曾因缺乏广泛兴趣被拒稿后
需早期决定文章类型为Article或Communication时
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jacs-scope-fit -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "jacs-scope-fit",
"description": "Use when deciding whether a chemistry result belongs in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) versus a specialized ACS journal, and which JACS format fits. Judges fit and venue — it does not improve the chemistry itself."
}
Scope and Venue Fit (jacs-scope-fit)
When to trigger
- You are unsure JACS is the right home versus a subfield ACS journal
- A co-author says "this is JACS-level" and you want a sober test
- An editor desk-rejected a prior version for "insufficient general interest"
- You must choose Article vs Communication early
The JACS bar (broad interest + rigor)
JACS publishes a significant chemical advance of broad interest across chemistry, fully supported by data. Two tests must both pass:
- Advance test — Is the result genuinely new and important, not incremental? A new reaction/bond construction, a new mechanism or principle, a new material/property, a new method that others will adopt, or a problem long considered hard that you solved.
- Breadth test — Will chemists outside your immediate subfield care? Generality (scope), conceptual insight, or enabling utility are the usual sources of breadth.
If only the advance test passes but breadth is narrow, a specialized journal is the honest fit.
Venue decision table
| Situation | Likely better venue |
|---|---|
| Broad, general-interest advance, fully supported | JACS (Article or Communication) |
| Solid methodology, mainly of interest within organic synthesis | Org. Lett. / J. Org. Chem. |
| Coordination/main-group/bioinorganic, subfield interest | Inorg. Chem. |
| Catalysis-focused, mechanism within catalysis community | ACS Catal. |
| Materials synthesis/properties, materials audience | Chem. Mater. / ACS Nano |
| Physical-chemistry measurement, PC audience | J. Phys. Chem. family |
| Incremental scope extension of a known reaction | Specialized journal, not JACS |
Verify current sister-journal scopes on the ACS site; portfolios evolve.
Format fit (set expectations early)
- Communication — a complete, urgent, high-impact advance that can stand on concise evidence (full proof lives in the SI). Choose when timeliness and a clean central result dominate.
- Article — a full account with complete scope, controls, and mechanism. Choose when the story needs tables of scope, multiple mechanistic probes, or several characterized systems.
- Confirm current article types and limits on the JACS author page; hand sizing
to
jacs-length-management.
Naming the breadth driver (be specific)
Editors triage on whether the manuscript itself argues breadth. Pick one primary driver and make the abstract carry it:
| Breadth driver | What must be in the data | Example framing |
|---|---|---|
| Generality | Scope spanning substrate classes others use daily; failures disclosed | "…across ethers, amines, and three drug scaffolds" |
| Concept / mechanism | A principle transferable beyond the system (new elementary step, selectivity model) | "…establishes ligand-controlled distal selectivity as a design rule" |
| Enabling utility | Something practitioners can now do (a disconnection, a probe, a material function) | "…renders the C(sp³)–F disconnection strategic in route design" |
| Long-standing problem | Documented prior failures by others; your data closing the gap | "…solves the site-selectivity problem posed since [prior art]" |
If you cannot fill the middle column from your own data, the driver is aspirational — either gather the missing evidence or pivot venue now, before writing.
Worked micro-example (same chemistry, two pitches)
- Subfield pitch (belongs at Org. Lett.): "We extend Ni-catalyzed hydroamination to six new pyrazole nucleophiles in 61–88% yield."
- JACS pitch (only if the data back it): "A single Ni catalyst couples any N–H heterocycle class we tested (5 azole families, 31 examples) with unactivated olefins, and kinetics reveal why: turnover-limiting olefin insertion is insensitive to azole pKa — a generality mechanism, not a scope accident."
The second pitch is honest only when the kinetics and the five-family scope exist. The scope-fit call is therefore a data audit, not a wording exercise.
Desk-rejection signals worth heeding
- Your own abstract needs a subfield term (e.g., a niche ligand class) to state why the result matters — the breadth case has not been made.
- The closest peer papers you can cite are all in specialized journals, none in JACS from the past few volumes.
- The advance sentence begins "We extend / We also / We further" — extension language reads as incremental at a flagship venue.
Checklist
- One sentence states the advance in terms a non-specialist chemist grasps
- The breadth source is named (generality / concept / enabling utility)
- At least two recent JACS papers in adjacent areas are identified as peers
- An honest answer to "why not a specialized journal?" is written down
- The intended format (Article vs Communication) is chosen with a reason
- No claim of breadth that the data cannot support
Anti-patterns
- Equating "lots of work" with "broad interest" — effort is not significance
- "First example of X in our hands" framed as a field-wide first
- Pitching an incremental substrate-scope paper as a conceptual advance
- Choosing Communication when the central claim actually needs full Article-level support
Output format
【Advance】one-sentence statement of the new chemistry
【Breadth source】generality / concept / enabling utility
【Verdict】JACS-fit / better at <named ACS journal>
【Format】Article / Communication (+ reason)
【Next】jacs-results-framing (if JACS-fit) or pivot venue
Related resources
../../resources/external_tools.md— characterization platforms and deposition services
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 14:00
