journalcheckertool.org

What It Is

Journal Checker Tool (JCT) is provided by cOAlition S for research authors and related systems. It checks whether a given combination of “journal, funder, and institution” has an open access publishing route that complies with Plan S. Its inputs are centered on the ISSN, with optional funder ID and institutional ROR ID; its output indicates whether the result is compliant, non-compliant, or unknown, along with the route used for the decision, qualification notes, and algorithm logs.

Core Capabilities and Developer Integration

From a developer tooling perspective, JCT’s main value lies in its public API. Its backend API can be called by third-party web services, with the base URL https://api.journalcheckertool.org/, and the core endpoint /calculate supports compliance calculation by ISSN, funder, and ROR. It covers routes such as Full OA, self-archiving, Transformative Agreement, Transformative Journal, and Hybrid Journal, and returns structures such as route, compliant, qualifications, log, and cards in the response. The log codes lay out the algorithm path in detail, making it easier to audit and explain results. This is useful for university research management systems, library tools, and manuscript submission assistance platforms.

Ecosystem, Open Source, and Documentation

JCT uses standard identifiers such as ISSN and ROR, and connects to data sources including DOAJ, Open Access Button, ESAC Registry, and Journal Comparison Service. The page lists the code repository github.com/CottageLabs/jct, but the text does not clearly state the license or self-hosting deployment method. Overall, the documentation is solid, covering endpoints, parameters, examples, response structures, compliance IDs, qualification IDs, log codes, and frontend card definitions. The main gaps are the lack of information on authentication, rate limits, versioning, SLA, and SDKs.

Pricing and Limitations

The captured text does not provide any pricing, payment, or commercial support information, so it is not possible to determine whether a paid tier exists. The tool’s scope is also clearly defined: it primarily serves cOAlition S/Plan S funding policies and is not a general-purpose journal evaluation tool. It only supports serial publications with an ISSN, so ISBN books and similar materials cannot be assessed. The official materials also state that the data reflects the current understanding and that no liability is accepted for errors or omissions.

Who It’s For and Access from China

JCT is suitable for authors, research institutions, libraries, and development teams that need to embed OA compliance checks into their systems, especially where Plan S applies. Access from mainland China is not covered in the text, so whether the API domain can be reached directly and reliably would need to be tested in practice; payment information is also unavailable. If the goal is only to look up OA journals or agreement data, DOAJ, ESAC Registry, and ROR can serve as partial alternatives, but they cannot fully replace JCT’s funder compliance algorithm.