---
name: pnas-fit
description: Use first, before any writing, to stress-test whether a result clears PNAS's bar — high quality and broad significance to a general scientific readership — and to make the realistic call between PNAS, Science/Nature, and a specialist field journal.
---

# Scope & Significance Fit (pnas-fit)

## Why this is skill #1

PNAS is selective, but its gate is different from Science/Nature. The bar is **high-quality, broadly significant science** — not *only* the single flashiest discovery of the year. A rigorous, important, well-supported paper that a general scientific audience would value has a real home at PNAS even if it is not top-1% headline news. Run this before investing in prose, and use it to make the **realistic step-down** call from Science/Nature.

## When to trigger

- Before drafting, to decide if PNAS is the right venue.
- After a Science/Nature desk reject or transfer, to judge whether PNAS is the right next stop.
- When choosing among Science/Nature, PNAS, and a top field journal.
- When a co-author who is an NAS member offers to communicate the paper (then also run `pnas-track`).

## PNAS's bar vs Science/Nature

| Bar level | Venue |
|-----------|-------|
| Top-1% general-interest discovery, decisive and timely | **Science / Nature** (use those packs) |
| High-quality, important, broadly significant — solid science a general audience values | **PNAS** |
| Deep but mostly of interest to one subfield | top **field journal** |
| Clinical/medical with patient outcomes | **NEJM / Lancet** (use those packs) |

PNAS values **solid important science over only-the-flashiest**. Do not under-sell a strong paper as "not good enough for PNAS" just because it would not lead Science; equally, do not inflate an incremental result.

## The general-significance test

Imagine a reader from a **different** PNAS division (a cell biologist reading a physics paper, an economist reading a genetics paper). The paper passes if that reader would say "I understand why this matters and I'd want to know about it." PNAS spans **Biological, Physical, and Social Sciences**, so the cross-division reader is real — write for them.

## Significance ladder (weak → strong)

1. **Confirms** an expected result in one system. (Weak — field journal.)
2. **Extends** a known effect to a new system/scale with clear added value. (Borderline — PNAS if the lesson is general.)
3. **Resolves** a question the broad community cares about. (Strong — solid PNAS.)
4. **Reveals** a previously unknown phenomenon, mechanism, or capability. (Strong — PNAS or up.)
5. **Overturns** a widely held assumption with decisive evidence. (Strongest — consider Science/Nature too.)

Rungs 2–4 are the PNAS sweet spot. Rung 5 may justify trying Science/Nature first; rung 1 points to a field journal.

## Venue routing

| Situation                                                        | Recommend              |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------|
| Rung 4–5, decisive, broad, timely                               | try **Science / Nature** first; **PNAS** is a strong fallback |
| Rung 2–4, solid, broadly significant, rigorous                  | **PNAS** (Direct or Contributed → `pnas-track`) |
| Deep but specialist                                             | top **field journal**  |
| Clinical/medical with patient outcomes                          | **NEJM / Lancet**       |
| Strong idea but evidence not yet decisive                       | add experiments before submitting |

## Fatal weak-fit triggers

- The advance is **incremental** over the authors' own prior paper with no general lesson.
- The claim is **narrow** ("in our system, under our conditions…") and stays there.
- The "broad implication" is **asserted, not demonstrated**.
- **Over-claiming**: the conclusion outruns the evidence.

## Output format

```
【Significance rung】 1–5 + one-line justification
【Cross-division reader test】 pass / borderline / fail (which other-division reader cares, and why)
【PNAS division (likely)】 Biological / Physical / Social Sciences
【Fatal triggers present】 [...]
【Recommended venue】 Science-Nature / PNAS / field journal / NEJM-Lancet
【If PNAS, the single sentence of broad significance】 "..."
【Next】 pnas-track (if PNAS) | reconsider venue (if fail)
```

## Anti-patterns

- **Do not** rationalize a specialist result into "broad significance" with adjectives.
- **Do not** confuse technical difficulty with significance — hard ≠ important.
- **Do not** treat PNAS as merely "the journal you settle for" — it has a real, defensible bar.
- **Do not** let sunk cost drive the venue decision.