Agsy Literature Positioning

Literature Positioning (agsy-literature-positioning)

AgSy is read by a systems-science audience that spans crop and livestock modelling, whole-farm and bio-economic analysis, sustainability assessment, and food-system science. Positioning is therefore not throat-clearing — the paper must show it advances the systems and modelling conversation, not just add another data point to one subfield.

When to trigger

• Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph
• A reviewer said you "ignored the relevant modelling work" or "don't engage the systems debate"
• Your agronomic or model results are solid but the framing reads as single-discipline
• You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior systems studies / models

How AgSy wants the literature engaged

1. Engage the systems debate, not a citation pile. Identify the open systems question — an unresolved trade-off, a contested mechanism, a model limitation, a scaling gap — that your paper addresses. Cite the works that define it.
2. Two literatures at once. The domain literature (the crop/livestock/farm/food system you study) and the methods literature (the model family, calibration/evaluation, sensitivity, trade-off analysis). AgSy reviewers expect both.
3. Locate your model among existing models. Why this model and not the standard alternatives (APSIM/DSSAT/STICS, whole-farm/bio-economic, ABM, integrated assessment)? What does yours add?
4. Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is mismodelled, untested across scales, or missing a trade-off, and why resolving it advances systems understanding.
5. Pre-empt the obvious objection. Acknowledge the strongest rival explanation or competing model and say how your design/evaluation adjudicates it (hand off to agsy-data-and-model-evaluation).

Cross-system engagement (a distinctive AgSy demand)

Worked micro-example: locating one contribution (illustrative)

A bioeconomic study of climate adaptation positions itself in two literatures at once:

• Domain: mixed crop–livestock adaptation studies, citing the works that frame the margin–environment trade-off as unresolved at farm scale.
• Methods: whole-farm bioeconomic modelling, naming why this model is chosen over a crop-only simulator (it represents the herd–manure–rotation feedback the trade-off depends on).
• Gap, stated precisely: prior models hold feed price exogenous and so cannot show how price shocks reshape land use — not "little is known."
• Strongest rival: a regional integrated-assessment paper, whose scale hides the farm-level feedback this study isolates and evaluates.

Referee pushback → the AgSy-specific fix

• "You ignored the relevant modelling work." → Add the methods literature (model family, calibration, trade-off analysis), not just the domain papers.
• "The contribution reads as incremental." → Name the specific systems gap (a mismodelled interaction, an untested scale) your design closes.

Anti-patterns

• A "literature dump" with no organizing systems question
• Engaging only the agronomy literature and ignoring the modelling/evaluation literature (or vice versa)
• Not situating your model among the standard model families
• Strawmanning prior models, or hiding the closest competing study
• Claiming "first to model" when the contribution is incremental

Positioning pass for Agricultural Systems

Run this as a concrete capability pass. First lock the system boundary, actor decision, model/data linkage, and sustainability or food-security tradeoff; then test whether the manuscript addresses agricultural-systems reviewers who expect crop, farm, value-chain, environment, and policy components to be connected rather than listed.

• Primary move: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
• Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
• Sibling comparison: compare against Field Crops Research for plot-level agronomy, Global Food Security for policy synthesis, Agricultural Economics for economics-first work; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
• Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.

Output format

【Systems debate】the open trade-off / mechanism / scaling / model gap
【Key works】the 3-6 that define it (domain + methods)
【Model landscape】where your model sits among alternatives
【Gap】what is mismodelled / untested across scales / missing a trade-off
【Move】how this paper changes the systems conversation
【Strongest rival】and how evaluation will adjudicate it
【Next】agsy-systems-framing-and-modeling

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — model families and systems data sources
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — AgSy scope and interaction-centered remit

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → Agricultural-Systems-Skills/skills/agsy-literature-positioning/SKILL.md