Prepare for Submission

SkillDev tools

Runs pre-submission checks (word count, anonymization, citations, placeholders, cross-refs) and generates a checklist. Use before journal submission.

Instructions available. Your AI can read the instructions. Execution depends on the setup they require.

Add ahel to your AI once: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code or Codex. Then ask it to use this.

Then ask your AI: use the Prepare for Submission skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills in skills/29-quarcs-lab-project20XXy/dot-claude/skills/submission-prep/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Run pre-submission checks and generate a submission checklist for a journal submission.

Steps

  1. Render the manuscript if _manuscript/ does not exist or is stale:

    bash scripts/render.sh
    
  2. Word count — Count words in the prose body of index.qmd:

    • Exclude YAML front matter, code blocks, embed shortcodes, and the References section
    • Report: total word count, and breakdown by section
    • Flag if over common limits (8,000 or 10,000 words)
  3. Anonymization check — Scan index.qmd for content that may violate double-blind review:

    • Author names (from the YAML author field) appearing in the body text
    • First-person self-citations (e.g., "our previous work", "we showed in Author (Year)")
    • Acknowledgments section content that identifies the authors
    • Repository URLs that reveal author identity
    • Report each finding with line numbers
  4. Citation audit — Cross-check citations and references:

    • Extract all @key and [@key] citations from index.qmd
    • Extract all keys from references.bib
    • Report:
      • Citations used in text but missing from .bib (errors)
      • Entries in .bib not cited in the manuscript (unused — informational only)
  5. Figures and tables inventory — List all embedded outputs:

    • Extract all {{< embed >}} shortcodes from index.qmd
    • For each, check that the referenced notebook and cell label exist
    • Report a table: label, notebook, caption (from cell directive), type (figure/table)
  6. Placeholder check — Scan for orphan [FILL:] placeholders in index.qmd:

    grep -n "\[FILL:" index.qmd
    

    Report each with line number and context.

  7. Cross-reference check — Scan for @sec-, @fig-, @tbl- references in index.qmd and verify each target exists (section IDs in the document, figure/table labels in notebooks).

  8. Generate submission checklist:

    ## Submission Checklist
    
    - [ ] Word count within journal limit: <count> words
    - [ ] No anonymization issues (or list issues to fix)
    - [ ] All citations resolve to references.bib entries
    - [ ] No orphan [FILL:] placeholders in manuscript
    - [ ] All embedded figures/tables have valid notebook sources
    - [ ] All cross-references resolve
    - [ ] Abstract present and complete
    - [ ] Keywords listed
    - [ ] Acknowledgments section reviewed
    - [ ] Data availability statement included
    - [ ] PDF renders without errors
    - [ ] Figures are high resolution
    - [ ] Supplementary materials prepared (if applicable)
    
  9. Report the full checklist with pass/fail status for each automated check, and leave manual items unchecked for the user.

Signals

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Last commit
Sep 2026
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Item type
skill
Key
submission-prep-brycewang-stanford
Source
github.com/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills