Epsl cover letter
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 Claude Code/Codex 期刊技能包，从选题、识别策略到表格规范与审稿回复全流程，助你快速发论文。
npx -y skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill epsl-cover-letterAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
What its author says it does
Copied from the file, not written here
Use when writing the cover letter and editor-facing metadata for an Earth and Planetary Science Letters (EPSL) submission. EPSL is run by a team of subject editors who screen for frontier significance and letters fit, so the letter must land the process-level advance, steer to the right editor, and supply clean suggested reviewers. It drafts the letter; it does not contact editors.
SKILL.md
5.0 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it
Cover Letter & Editor Pitch (epsl-cover-letter)
EPSL manuscripts are handled by an editor whose own research sits near the paper's sub-field — geochemistry, geophysics, geodynamics, planetary science (the current editor roster changes; re-check it on the journal site). Your letter is read by a scientist who can evaluate the claim directly, so it must be a precise scientific argument for significance, not marketing. Its three jobs: state the frontier advance, demonstrate letters fit, and make the editor's reviewer search easy.
When to trigger
- Writing the cover letter for a new EPSL submission
- Choosing the editor whose remit matches the paper (where the system allows a preference)
- Assembling suggested and opposed reviewers with conflict statements
- Re-pitching after a desk decline at another high-bar venue
What the letter must do
- Open with the advance, quantified. Two or three sentences: the process question, what your result establishes, and the number that carries it — written for a scientist-editor, without superlatives.
- Argue portability explicitly. One sentence on why readers beyond the study region or method community need the result; this is the desk-screen axis regional studies fail.
- Show letters fit. Confirm one decisive result, main text within the cap, no companion manuscript in play.
- Flag the cross-disciplinary reviewer pairing. If the paper joins two sub-fields, say so and suggest reviewers from each — it tells the editor you understand how EPSL will referee it.
- State integrity basics. Original work, not under consideration elsewhere, all authors approve, preprint status if any, data deposited (name the repositories), competing interests declared.
- Suggest clean reviewers. Several qualified names with no recent co-authorship, shared institution, or advising ties; opposed reviewers named soberly with a one-line reason if needed.
The subject editor's silent questions
| Editor asks silently | Weak letter | Letter that survives |
|---|---|---|
| Is this a frontier advance? | "we present new data from X" | "this is the first measurement that separates hypothesis A from B, at ±… precision" |
| Will non-specialists care? | portability unstated | "any interpretation of [archive/process] must now correct for…" |
| Is it a Letter? | length/scope unmentioned | "a single result, 5,900-word main text" |
| Can I referee it fairly? | reviewer list from one clique | reviewers spanning both sub-fields, conflicts stated |
| Are the data real and open? | silence | "full tables at EarthChem (DOI), code at Zenodo (DOI)" |
Worked micro-example (illustrative — pitching the detrital-lag paper)
- Weak hook (desk-decline risk): "We report 600 new detrital-zircon U-Pb ages from the X Basin together with bedrock thermochronology, and discuss the provenance of the basin fill." An editor files this under regional provenance.
- Strong hook: "We provide the first direct measurement of the lag between mountain exhumation and its appearance in the sedimentary record — 5.0 ± 1.2 Myr (illustrative) — by dating both ends of one sediment-routing system. Detrital archives are read worldwide as if this lag were zero; our result makes that reading correctable." Process, number, portability — in three sentences.
The conversion move is always the same: replace what was measured where with what everyone else must now do differently.
Anti-patterns
- A letter that inventories the dataset but never states what it decides
- "Novel," "unprecedented," "paradigm" doing the work that a number should do
- Ignoring the regional-study objection when the title contains a place name
- Suggesting only reviewers from the authors' collaboration network
- Omitting data-deposition, preprint, or competing-interest statements
- A letter longer than a page
Output format
【Hook】advance + number + portability in ≤3 sentences
【Letters fit】one result + within cap + no companion paper
【Editor】subject remit matched (re-check current roster)
【Reviewers】suggested (both sub-fields) + conflicts stated; opposed if any
【Integrity】originality / authors / preprint / data DOIs / COI
【Length】one page? [Y/N]
【Next】epsl-review-process
Supplementary resources
../../resources/official-source-map.md— journal home and editor roster (re-check before naming anyone)../../resources/exemplars/library.md— abstracts whose significance framing translates to strong hooks