---
name: ajps-literature-positioning
description: Use when positioning an American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) manuscript against the literature. AJPS is double-blind, so positioning must engage the relevant debates while keeping the manuscript fully anonymized (third-person self-citation, no first-person "we showed"). Stakes the contribution; it does not write the lit review.
---

# Literature Positioning (ajps-literature-positioning)

At AJPS the introduction must do two things at once: place the paper inside a **live empirical or
theoretical debate** that a broad political-science readership recognizes, **and** stay consistent with
**double-blind** review. The second constraint is easy to break — a single "as we demonstrated in our
2021 paper" can identify the authors. Positioning is where the contribution is staked and where
anonymity is most often lost.

## When to trigger

- Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph
- A reviewer said you "missed obvious work" or "don't engage the debate"
- Distinguishing your contribution from the closest prior papers
- Checking that self-citations are anonymized for double-blind review

## How AJPS wants the literature engaged

1. **Engage a debate, not a citation pile.** Name the live disagreement, the contested estimate, or
   the open mechanism your paper speaks to, and cite the works that *define* it.
2. **Locate the marginal contribution precisely.** "Prior work estimates effect E assuming A; we relax
   A / identify E cleanly / show E is conditional on C." A generalist reader should see the increment.
3. **Pre-empt the obvious rival.** AJPS reviewers are expert and quantitatively literate; name the
   strongest alternative explanation and signal how the design adjudicates it (hand off to
   `ajps-research-design`).
4. **Speak to a broad readership.** AJPS spans subfields; show why a reader outside your niche should
   care, without diluting the specialist contribution.

## Keep positioning double-blind (an AJPS-specific demand)

- **Third-person self-citation.** Cite your own prior work as you would anyone else's — never "in our
  earlier work" or "we previously showed."
- **No identifying tells.** Remove acknowledgments, grant numbers, named datasets you uniquely hold,
  conference-presentation mentions, and "available on my website" links.
- **Watch the bibliography.** A wall of single-author self-cites can de-anonymize even in third person;
  cite only what the argument needs (see `ajps-submission`).

## Anti-patterns

- A "literature dump" with no organizing debate
- First-person self-reference that breaks anonymity ("as we showed in...")
- Strawmanning prior work or hiding the closest competitor paper
- Claiming "first to study" when the contribution is incremental
- Padding citations to signal effort rather than to position the contribution

## Output format

```
【Debate】the live disagreement / contested estimate
【Key works】the 3-6 that define it
【Gap】what is contested / mismeasured / unidentified
【Move】how this paper changes the debate
【Strongest rival】and how the design will adjudicate it
【Anonymity】self-cites in third person, no identifying tells? [Y/N]
【Next】ajps-theory-building
```

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — double-blind review and anonymizing requirements