lit-review-assistant_skill

Overview

This skill helps economists search, summarize, and synthesize economics literature efficiently. It provides guided search strategies, standardized paper-summary templates, and synthesis tools to identify consensus and research gaps. Use it to structure literature reviews, build citation networks, and prepare annotated bibliographies for papers or proposals.

How this skill works

I guide you through defining a focused research domain, creating targeted search terms, and selecting databases suited to your access. For each paper I help you produce a concise, structured summary (citation, question, data, methods, findings, limitations, relevance). I then aggregate summaries to highlight patterns, disagreements, and open questions and produce actionable synthesis notes you can plug into an introduction or literature review section.

When to use it

• Starting a literature review for a new project or thesis
• Preparing the introduction or related-work section of a paper
• Synthesizing evidence across studies for a policy brief or grant proposal
• Identifying methodological gaps or underexplored outcomes
• Curating annotated bibliographies or building citation networks

Best practices

• Define a clear research question and scope before searching
• Combine primary terms with methodological and outcome filters
• Keep structured summaries for every paper (citation, methods, findings, limitations)
• Record search queries and inclusion criteria for reproducibility
• Use a reference manager and update your review regularly

Example use cases

• Generate search terms and a database plan for a study on minimum wage effects
• Produce 5–10 structured paper summaries and a one-page synthesis for a conference submission
• Map forward and backward citations from seminal papers to build a citation network
• Identify 3–4 concrete research gaps and methodological approaches for a grant application
• Convert summaries into an annotated bibliography compatible with Zotero/Mendeley