# Publishing And Peer Review > Use when the user is acting as an author, reviewer, or editor-facing correspondent in a scientific publication process and needs help with journal submission packages, cover letters, presubmission or editor inquiries, peer-review reports, reviewer ethics, conflicts, confidentiality, editorial decision interpretation, appeals, transfers, resubmission strategy, or response-to-reviewers letters. Trigger on concrete publication-process decisions or artifacts, not on general manuscript prose editing, figure design, grant review, literature summaries, or journal-ranking curiosity without an active submission/review context. - Skill: `jjfroehlich/publishing-and-peer-review` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 11 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add jjfroehlich/publishing-and-peer-review` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/jjfroehlich/publishing-and-peer-review/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Research & Search - License: MIT - Author: jjfroehlich (https://skillmd.com/u/jjfroehlich) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/jjfroehlich/publishing-and-peer-review --- # Publishing And Peer Review ## Purpose Help the user make publication-process decisions and produce bounded artifacts for submission, peer review, editorial communication, revision, and response-to-reviewers work. ## Use this skill when - The user needs a journal submission, presubmission inquiry, cover letter, rejection strategy, transfer decision, or resubmission package. - The user is writing, revising, or evaluating a peer-review report. - The request concerns reviewer ethics, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, confidential comments, open review, or reviewer overreach. - The user needs a response-to-reviewers plan, point-by-point response, or respectful disagreement with reviewer comments. - The user asks how to interpret an editorial decision, revision request, or reviewer recommendation. ## Do not use this skill when - The user primarily wants manuscript prose rewritten; apply a scientific-writing lens instead. - The task is figure design, chart choice, or visual communication. - The request is about grant review, thesis supervision, career planning, or literature synthesis without a publication-process decision. - The user asks for journal rankings or impact-factor strategy without a concrete submission or review artifact. ## Core workflow 1. Identify the role: author, reviewer, editor-facing correspondent, or mixed role. 2. Identify the next process action: submit, revise, appeal, transfer, decline, review, respond, or ask the editor a focused question. 3. Ask only for missing facts that change the next action: decision letter, target journal, review invitation, manuscript type, deadline, or policy constraint. 4. Route to the narrow playbook: journal submission, editorial process, peer reviewing, reviewer ethics, or response to reviewers. 5. Separate process guidance from manuscript-quality feedback. 6. Produce the artifact in a trackable format: checklist, review outline, cover-letter plan, editor inquiry, or point-by-point response. 7. Check for ethics, confidentiality, reviewer overreach, and unsupported claims before finalizing. ## Output formats - Submission-readiness review with journal-fit risks and missing package items. - Cover-letter or presubmission-inquiry outline. - Editorial-decision diagnosis with next-step options. - Peer-review report outline with major/minor comments and confidential-note guidance. - Reviewer-ethics decision memo. - Point-by-point response-to-reviewers plan or draft. ## Reference routing - `references/journal-submission.md`: Use for journal fit, cover letters, submission packages, rejection strategy, appeal, transfer, and resubmission decisions. - `references/editorial-process.md`: Use for interpreting editor decisions, revision expectations, reviewer synthesis, and editor communication. - `references/peer-reviewing.md`: Use for review invitations, manuscript review workflow, review structure, constructive comments, reviewer overreach, and statistical-review triage. - `references/reviewer-ethics.md`: Use for conflict, confidentiality, privileged information, misconduct concerns, confidential comments, open review, or review transfer. - `references/response-to-reviewers.md`: Use for response letters, point-by-point plans, respectful disagreement, reviewer misunderstandings, and out-of-scope requested experiments. ## Quick checklist - Role and next process action are explicit. - Advice is bounded to the current journal, manuscript, review invitation, or decision letter. - Major issues are separated from minor polish. - Any requested experiment or analysis is tied to a claim that actually needs it. - Confidential, ethical, or editor-only material is not put into author-facing text. - The output tells the user what to send, revise, decline, or ask next. ## Common pitfalls - Treating a rejection as an appeal problem before diagnosing scope, evidence, novelty, or process error. - Writing peer reviews as unprioritized reactions instead of evidence-linked major and minor comments. - Asking authors for open-ended new projects when a claim limit, analysis clarification, or future-work statement would address the concern. - Responding defensively to reviewers without changing the manuscript or giving a clear rationale. - Exposing confidential review material, source provenance, raw URLs, or bibliography-style evidence in exported skill outputs. ## Quality bar - The answer must be role-aware, process-aware, and ethically bounded. - The answer must produce a concrete next artifact or decision, not generic publication advice. - Reviewer and response language must be calm, specific, actionable, and traceable to manuscript claims. - Disagreements must state the concern, evidence or constraint, and the bounded change or non-change. - Exported outputs must avoid private provenance, source lists, citation maps, raw URLs, and DOI-like identifiers.