---
name: psci-literature-positioning
description: Use when positioning a Psychological Science manuscript against the literature within the journal's tight word budget. With roughly 40 references and a 2,000-word Introduction+Discussion, positioning must be sharp — establish the gap and the contribution fast. Stakes the contribution; it does not write the literature review.
---

# Literature Positioning (psci-literature-positioning)

Psychological Science gives you almost no room for a traditional literature review: roughly **40
references** and an Introduction that shares a **2,000-word** budget with the Discussion. Positioning
must be **surgical** — name the open question, the contribution, and the broad relevance in a few
tight paragraphs.

## When to trigger

- Drafting or compressing the Introduction
- A reviewer said the contribution is "incremental" or "not clearly novel"
- You have far more citations than the format allows and must prioritize
- Connecting a specific finding to a broad psychological question

## How to position in tight space

1. **Open with the question and its stakes**, not a textbook history. Two or three sentences on why
   the phenomenon matters across psychology.
2. **Name the gap precisely.** What is unresolved, contested, or untested — and why settling it
   matters. Avoid "little is known."
3. **State the contribution early.** By the end of a short Introduction the reader knows the question,
   the approach, and what is new (novel finding, robust replication, decisive test, or extension).
4. **Cite to anchor, not to pad.** Choose the works that *define* the question and the closest prior
   studies. ~40 references is plenty for a focused contribution; prune redundancy.
5. **Make breadth explicit.** Show a psychologist outside the subarea why the result matters to them.

## Replications and extensions

- Frame a replication around **why it matters now** (theoretical stakes, prior result's influence,
  power/credibility of the original), not as a bare repetition. Extensions should state the new
  boundary or mechanism tested.

## Citation-budget triage (working with ~40 references)

When your reference list overflows the format, sort every candidate into one of four roles and keep
only what earns its slot. Confirm the current reference allowance against the journal's submission
guidelines, but the discipline is the same.

| Role | Keep? | Why it earns a slot in Psychological Science |
|------|-------|----------------------------------------------|
| Defines the open question | always | without it the gap is not legible |
| Closest prior result you beat/extend | always | this is the contribution's contrast class |
| Method/measure provenance | usually | reviewers check construct validity |
| Broad-relevance anchor (another subarea) | one or two | the breadth signal editors screen for |
| Background-completeness citation | cut first | the format rewards precision, not coverage |

## Worked micro-example (illustrative)

A two-study attention package wants to position against a famous but underpowered emotional-capture
finding. Weak framing: "Prior work has examined attentional capture (refs 1–18)." Venue-fit framing:

```
Stakes:   Capture by emotional distractors is a load-bearing assumption
          across clinical, social, and cognitive accounts of self-regulation.
Gap:      The single most-cited demonstration (N ≈ 40, no preregistration)
          has never been tested under a power-justified, preregistered design.
Contribution (stated by paragraph two):
          Two preregistered studies (N = 240; N = 300) provide a powered,
          transparent test and a boundary condition (trait anxiety).
Breadth:  Settles a premise that downstream clinical-science models inherit.
```

## Positioning-stage reviewer pushback and the venue fix

| Reviewer pushback | Psychological Science fix |
|-------------------|---------------------------|
| "Contribution is incremental" | name the *decisive* test or boundary, not a longer literature tour |
| "First to show" overclaim | downgrade to "first powered, preregistered test of"; cite the priors honestly |
| "Reads as a narrow-paradigm result" | add the one breadth anchor showing who outside the subarea inherits the claim |
| "Too many citations for the format" | apply the triage table; move completeness refs to supplemental |

## Anti-patterns

- A long, chronological literature review that the word format cannot hold
- Burying the contribution after pages of background
- Citing exhaustively to seem thorough (the format rewards precision, not breadth)
- "First to show" claims for an incremental effect
- Positioning only within a narrow paradigm with no broad relevance

## Output format

```
【Question + stakes】why it matters across psychology
【Gap】what is unresolved / contested / untested
【Contribution】novel / replication / decisive test / extension — stated early?
【Anchor citations】the defining works + closest priors (≈ within ~40 total)
【Breadth】who outside the subarea cares
【Next】psci-theory-and-hypotheses
```

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — reference count and word format