Peer Review

Core Rule

Simulate the referee you fear, before the journal assigns one. This skill runs an adversarial, evidence-bound review: it surfaces what a skeptical reviewer would attack — overclaim, unsupported assertions, scope creep, methods gaps, statistical sins — and produces a referee report you can act on. The review reports; it does not silently edit the manuscript. Fixes that touch the thesis, a quantity, methods, or an argument-carrying citation are Protected Claims (CLAUDE.md) and need author sign-off.

The reviewers are bound by the same cardinal rule as the writer: a critique must point at real text and a real problem. No invented weaknesses, no citations the reviewer "expects to see" that don't exist as a demand — every issue cites a section/line.

When to Use

Invoke with /peer-review when:

• A draft is complete and you want a referee report before submission.
• A major section (Discussion, Methods) is settled and you want it stress-tested.
• You are deciding readiness for a target venue (pair with /journal-fit).
• A reviser wants to know which Reviewer-2 objections are still open.

Scope it: /peer-review for the whole manuscript, or /peer-review sections/methods.tex for one section.

Process

Phase 1: Load the Manuscript and Its Contract

1. Read MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md — Thesis, Contribution, Audience, target venue, Key sources, "Claims that need extra care," and the Structure table. The review judges the manuscript against its own stated thesis and scope — a reviewer's first question is "did they deliver what they claimed?"
2. Read the manuscript — every section file in the Structure table (or the scoped file).
3. Read tasks/reviews/_index.md → ## Top Rules — recurring prior critiques. If a reviewer already flagged "you overclaim in the discussion," check it has been addressed; an unfixed Top Rule is a Major issue.
4. Note the field overlay in agent_docs/field/ if one exists — discipline-specific reporting standards the reviewer will hold you to.

Phase 2: Dispatch the Reviewer Agents

Run two specialist agents in parallel — they read the manuscript independently and return findings:

1. peer-reviewer agent — the scholarly referee. Judges:

   • Significance & novelty — is the contribution real and clearly distinguished from prior work?
   • Soundness — do the methods support the claims? Is the analysis appropriate?
   • Claim calibration — does every results/discussion sentence stay within what the evidence licenses? (verb + quantifier + scope)
   • Clarity & structure — does each section establish the one claim it owes (MANUSCRIPT_MAP → Structure)?
   • Statistics — effect size + uncertainty reported, not just significance; N, test, and assumptions stated (agent_docs/statistics.md).

2. integrity-reviewer agent — the research-integrity referee. Judges:

   • Sourcing — every substantive claim is cited, the author's own, or common knowledge; no UNSUPPORTED assertions.
   • No fabrication — no invented-looking citation, DOI, quantity, or quote; placeholders ([CITE], [VALUE — verify]) surfaced, not hidden.
   • Quote fidelity — quotations verbatim with locators.
   • Reproducibility — data/code availability stated; methods sufficient to reproduce (agent_docs/reproducibility.md).
   • Scope honesty — generalization claims match the tested population/matrix.

If the agents are unavailable in this environment, run both review lenses yourself sequentially — but keep them as separate passes (scholarly soundness vs integrity), because they catch different failures.

Phase 3: Dedupe and Triage

The two agents will overlap (an overclaim is both a soundness and an integrity issue). Merge:

1. Collapse duplicates — same sentence flagged by both → one issue, noting both lenses.
2. Classify severity:
   • Major — threatens a central claim, the contribution, soundness, or integrity. Would justify "major revision" or rejection. (Unsupported thesis-level claim, methods that don't support the result, fabrication risk, unaddressed prior Top Rule.)
   • Minor — does not threaten the conclusion but should be fixed. (Local overclaim, a missing cite on a secondary claim, an undefined cross-reference, a clarity issue.)
3. Order by impact — Major issues first, most central first. A reviewer leads with the objection that decides the paper.

Phase 4: Write the Referee Report

Produce a report in the shape a journal referee submits: a Summary that proves you understood the contribution, then Major and Minor issues, then a recommendation. Keep the reviewer's professional, specific voice — every point names a location and states the fix or the question.

Phase 5: Hand Off, Do Not Auto-Fix

End with a checklist of edits the author can apply. Do not apply them in this skill. Surface Protected Claims explicitly (thesis/quantity/methods/argument-citation changes) so the author decides. Offer to run /claim-check on flagged overclaims and /citation-audit on flagged bibliography issues as the follow-up.

Output Format

# Referee Report — <manuscript title> (simulated)

## Summary (reviewer's understanding)
This manuscript argues <thesis, in the reviewer's words>. The contribution is
<X>, established via <method>. [2–4 sentences showing the contribution was understood.]

## Recommendation
Major revision  (Major: 3, Minor: 6)

## Major Issues
1. **[Soundness]** §Discussion ¶3 (discussion.tex:41): The claim "the gate causes
   higher tool-call accuracy across task settings" is causal and general, but the
   design tests one agent harness and shows association. The conclusion overreaches
   the evidence.
   → Restrict to the tested harness and to associational language, or supply the
   comparison/identification that licenses the stronger claim. (Protected: verb +
   scope change on the central claim.)
2. **[Integrity]** §Results (results.tex:62): "23% baseline hallucination rate" carries
   no citation and is not in the data. UNSUPPORTED. → Cite the source or flag
   [CITE]; do not assert it bare.
3. **[Prior Top Rule]** tasks/reviews flagged overclaim in the discussion before;
   §Discussion ¶5 repeats the pattern. → Apply the existing rule.

## Minor Issues
1. **[Statistics]** §Results: p-values reported without effect sizes or CIs. Add both.
2. **[Clarity]** §Intro ¶2: the gap is stated twice; the contribution once. Invert.
3. **[Cross-ref]** discussion.tex:40: \ref{fig:horizon} has no \label.
4. **[Terminology]** "tool-call accuracy" and "success rate" used interchangeably — lock one (MANUSCRIPT_MAP → Terminology).
5. **[Sourcing]** §Intro: "widely reported" needs at least one cite or reframing.
6. **[Reproducibility]** No data-availability statement.

## Edit Checklist (for the author — not auto-applied)
- [ ] Discussion ¶3: calibrate verb + scope (PROTECTED — confirm)
- [ ] Results: resolve [CITE] on baseline hallucination rate
- [ ] Results: add effect sizes + CIs
- [ ] Fix \ref{fig:horizon}
- [ ] Add data-availability statement
- [ ] Lock terminology to "tool-call accuracy"

## Suggested follow-ups
- /claim-check sections/discussion.tex  (the overclaim cluster)
- /citation-audit                       (sourcing + cross-ref issues)

Pairs With

• peer-reviewer agent + integrity-reviewer agent — the two lenses this skill orchestrates (Phase 2). Defined in .claude/agents/; methodology in agent_docs/peer-review.md.
• /claim-check — the targeted follow-up for flagged overclaims (verb/quantifier verification against sources).
• /citation-audit — the follow-up for flagged bibliography/cross-reference issues.
• /journal-fit — run alongside when the question is also "is this the right venue?"
• tasks/reviews/ — recurring critiques live here; an unaddressed Top Rule is automatically a Major issue.

Common Rationalizations

Notes

• Reviewing is judgment-heavy — run on the Reasoner model (CLAUDE.md → Model Selection).
• Feed the outcome back: a critique you keep receiving is a rule. Log it to tasks/reviews/ and promote to Top Rules if it recurs.
• This is a simulation — it pre-empts likely objections; it does not guarantee acceptance. Its job is to leave Reviewer 2 with less to say.