io-review-process — independently scanned and version-tracked by SaferSkills.
SaferSkills independently audited io-review-process (Agent Skill) and scored it 100/100 (green). The audit ran 55 deterministic rules across Security, Supply Chain, Maintenance, Transparency, and Community; it found 0 high-severity and 0 lower-severity findings. The full rule-by-rule trace and per-finding evidence are below. Free, methodology-open.
Findings & checks · 0 flagged
Every scanned point with the score it earned and what moved between them.
First recorded scan — no prior version to compare against.
The primary manifest — the file an agent reads to learn what this artifact does.
Knowing how IO screens, reviews, and verifies lets you pre-empt the failure modes before submitting. IO is double-blind, reviewed by expert international-relations referees, and — distinctively — verifies your quantitative results and formal-model proofs before final acceptance.
manuscript and use third-person self-citation (see io-submission).
major cause or effect, and does the paper offer a generalizable IR theory? Papers that are really domestic-politics, or descriptive single-case accounts, are at risk early.
returned anonymously to the author**, and the editors write a decision letter.
flagships, a first-round accept is rare; an R&R is the realistic good outcome for a strong paper.
editorial staff request data/code; IO staff re-run quantitative results and verify formal-model proofs, and editors withhold final acceptance until all reported analyses are confirmed (see io-transparency-and-data-policy).
Exact referee counts, desk-rejection rates, and timelines are not published as fixed numbers — treat them as 待核实 and confirm on the live page.
"not really IR" / "just a case" screen).
IO's editors triage for fit before sending anything out, so the highest-leverage move is surviving the screen. The recurring desk-stage rejections at this venue cluster as follows:
| Screen verdict | What the editor saw | Repair before submitting |
|---|---|---|
| "Not really IR" | domestic politics with international data bolted on | re-center so the cross-border phenomenon is the cause/effect (io-topic-selection) |
| "Descriptive, not theoretical" | a single-institution account, no portable claim | build a generalizable mechanism (io-theory-building) |
| "Already known / incremental" | confirms existing IR consensus | sharpen the live disagreement entered (io-literature-positioning) |
| "Narrow significance" | a real finding that only IR-subfield specialists would care about | raise the stakes to a general theory of world politics |
| "Wrong venue" | a pure methods or pure-economics contribution | confirm IO's IR/IPE remit fits the payoff |
Because IO is a specialist flagship, the "not really IR" and "descriptive, not theoretical" screens are the two most common; both are about the argument, not the data.
IO referees are working international-relations scholars, frequently from a different paradigm than the author. In practice they weight: (1) theoretical contribution — does a portable theory of international politics emerge, or just a result; (2) identification / inferential credibility on the paper's own methodological terms; (3) engagement with the rival tradition they personally hold; and (4) broad significance to the field. A paper can be airtight empirically and still draw a reject if the theory is thin — at IO the theory premium dominates, and that ordering is the single most reliable calibration anchor for predicting a referee's verdict (the precise weighting is referee-dependent and should not be over-read).
【Fit check】international phenomenon = major cause/effect + generalizable theory? [Y/N]
【IR debate engaged】across relevant traditions? [Y/N]
【Strongest rival】answered in the design? [Y/N]
【Verification-ready】code re-runs + proofs complete for the post-conditional check? [Y/N]
【Realistic outcome】reject / R&R / (rare) accept
【Next】io-submission (or io-rebuttal if decided)../../resources/official-source-map.md — double-blind review, anonymous reviews to author, verification-before-final-acceptance policy~30 seconds. Free. No account. Every finding cites a rule and a line of evidence.