Evidence Standards — Appraisal & Balance (amann-evidence-standards)

When to trigger

• The framework is set and you are filling cells with the literature
• The field has rival schools, a live controversy, or conflicting empirical results
• You must decide whether to cite everything or curate, and how to weigh disagreeing studies
• You are a contributor to this literature and worry the review tilts toward your own work

At Annals you are the field's reviewer-of-record

An Annals review carries no estimates of its own — but it is not therefore neutral. The "attitude" is disciplined critical appraisal: you judge how good the cumulative evidence is, reconcile conflicts by credibility, and state where the field's confidence is and is not warranted. This is the review-craft replacement for primary-research robustness checks: you are appraising other people's designs, not defending your own.

Completeness vs. selectivity: the Annals contract

A review must be comprehensive in coverage yet selective in emphasis — long (~50 pages) but not an inventory. Resolve the tension by tiering the corpus: