light-venue-matching

Venue matching · stage 12

Turn a delivered paper into an auditable venue decision. Read venue-resource-map.md before a real run and references/workflow_contract.md before producing or consuming JSON. Use references.md to choose current sources. Start from templates/venue_input.json; never start from model memory or a bundled venue list.

Non-negotiable boundaries

1. Consume typesetting's venue-handoff.json. Verify its PDF path/hash, DELIVERED, pages, page size, profile/source, compliance PASS, and zero critical findings. Preserve paper/figure/citation/typesetting provenance. Do not compile, reformat, inspect page boxes again, or treat stage-11 UNAVAILABLE as compliance.
2. Consume paper-writing's manuscript/claim profile through manuscript_profile.claims_delivery with a safe relative path, schema, and SHA-256. Do not change claims, methods, results, article type, data scale, or evidence strength to make a venue fit. Citation owns reference authenticity; figure owns visual honesty.
3. Treat acceptance rate, review time, APC/OA, indexing, quartile, and CFP deadline as high-velocity fields. Require a source checked on the run date. Otherwise emit UNKNOWN, UNAVAILABLE, or STALE; never use memory. AVAILABLE sources must carry an auditable locator (url, query, locator, or path), checked_at, access_tier, and authority. Official rules/fees/deadlines require official/publisher/venue authority; indexing and quartile require index/registry authority.
4. Treat 403/429/5xx, missing key/login/subscription, robots denial, and source outage as UNAVAILABLE. They do not mean “not indexed,” “not in DOAJ,” “free,” or “risky.”
5. Keep predatory/hijacked signals as visible warnings pending current, multi-source human review. DOAJ absence, high APC, fast review, unsolicited email, unusual volume, or one archived list is not a final verdict.
6. Never estimate an acceptance percentage or convert fit into acceptance probability. Use official current acceptance figures only with source/date; otherwise acceptance_likelihood.status=UNKNOWN.
7. Keep decision_point=true and chosen=null through candidate discovery, evidence collection, ranking, and delivery. Stop and ask the user to choose. Only an explicit light.venue_user_selection.v1 may create a selected handoff. Record a direct choice as actor=user; if the user explicitly delegates the choice, preserve the authorization verbatim and use actor=agent_with_user_authorization, decision_authority=user. Never submit. Every selection artifact must include timezone-aware selected_at and the user's stated trade-off in because. Bind the choice to the exact reviewed packet with decision_sha256; a changed packet or any changed registry/evidence/fit artifact requires a new review and selection.
8. Do not invent STAGE_GATES[12], ROUTES[12], a confirmation checkpoint, critical findings, or a back-edge. Stage 12 is a user decision point with no configured gate or route edge.