From your abstract to related work, researchers and journals
- We pick out the key terms of your title and abstract.
- We search OpenAlex, the open index of more than 250 million scholarly works, for the published articles closest to yours.
- Our own language model, running on our server in the EU, measures how close each of these articles and each journal's recent work is to your text.
- A ranking model orders the journals. It combines how close a journal's work is to yours with how often its articles are cited.
- Every suggestion shows its closest articles, so you can judge the fit yourself. Fees, open access and citation rates come from OpenAlex and DOAJ.
- The same search gives you the related work closest to your abstract (preprints included), the researchers who published it, and how fast the topic is growing.
Your abstract stays yours
- Never stored. Your title, abstract and references exist only in our server's working memory while the search runs. They are not saved to a database, file, cache or log.
- Never used for training. Our models learned only from published articles. What you enter never trains them and is never read by a person.
- No AI services. The model runs on our own server in the EU. No text goes to ChatGPT or any other AI provider.
- Anonymous lookups. To find related articles, our server sends your title, key terms and the beginning of your abstract to OpenAlex, without your name, email or IP address.
Questions and answers
Is Research Compass free?
Yes. You can run 3 analyses a day without an account and 10 a day with a free account.
Which journals can it suggest?
Established, active journals from every publisher that are listed in CWTS Journal Indicators Core or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and publish mainly in English. You can widen the search to all journals in OpenAlex.
How is it different from publisher journal finders?
Journal finders run by publishers, such as Elsevier JournalFinder, Springer Nature Journal Suggester or Wiley Journal Finder, only suggest journals of their own publisher, and JANE covers mainly biomedical literature in PubMed. Research Compass compares journals from all publishers and also shows the closest literature, the researchers working on the topic and how fast the topic grows.
Is my abstract stored or used to train AI?
No. Your title, abstract and references are processed only in our server's working memory and discarded when the analysis ends. They are never written to a database or log, never read by a person and never used to train a model. Our language model runs on our own server in the EU; no text goes to ChatGPT or other AI services. To find related articles, the server sends your title, key terms and the beginning of your abstract to OpenAlex, without your name, email or IP address.
How does it decide which journals fit?
It finds the published articles closest to your title and abstract in OpenAlex, compares your text with the recent work of each journal using its own language model, and orders the journals with a ranking model that was trained only on published articles. Every suggestion shows the closest articles as evidence.
How should I read the scores?
Scores compare the suggested journals with each other: your best match gets 100 and the others are relative to it. A lower score means less close than your best match, not unsuitable.
Does it tell me whether my paper will be accepted?
No. It shows where your work fits and how journals compare. Acceptance depends on the paper, the editors and the reviewers. Few journals publish acceptance rates, so check their websites.
Can I filter for open access or publication fees?
Yes. You can show open-access journals only and set a maximum fee in USD. Diamond open-access journals, which charge authors nothing, are marked.
Where does the data come from?
From OpenAlex, the open catalogue of more than 250 million scholarly works (CC0), and the journal lists of CWTS Journal Indicators Core and DOAJ.