journal-selection

journal-selection is a skill for Claude Code from muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (2,899 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for choosing an academic journal, the publication where research papers are submitted and reviewed. It explains journal scope, publication options, citation metrics, and warning signs of predatory journals.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to compare journals, check whether a manuscript fits their subject area, assess open-access choices, identify questionable outlets, and plan a resubmission after rejection.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of submitting to a journal that does not fit the paper or audience, which can lead to rejection or wasted time. It also helps interpret metrics without treating them as a complete measure of quality.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the academic-writer plugin — 27 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to compare journals, check whether a manuscript fits their subject area, assess open-access choices, identify questionable outlets, and plan a resubmission after rejection.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/journal-selection
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills --skill journal-selection
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install academic-writer, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 27 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for journal-selection

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/journal-selection/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/journal-selection)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/journal-selection"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/journal-selection/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for journal-selection

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/journal-selection"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/journal-selection.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,899 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00000 $0.02899
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01450
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00580
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00290

Measured 11d ago against content hash 83f0afb9a1e6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

journal-selection scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/journal-selection/SKILL.md · 239 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 239 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Journal Selection

Choosing the right journal is one of the most consequential decisions in the publication process. A well-matched submission reaches the right audience quickly; a poor match wastes months in desk rejection or misaligned review.


Journal Metrics — What They Measure and Their Limits

Metric Publisher What It Measures Key Limitation
Impact Factor (IF) Clarivate / JCR Mean citations in 2 years to articles published in prior 2 years Skewed by high-citation outliers; only for JCR-indexed journals
CiteScore Elsevier / Scopus Mean citations over 4 years (broader window) Limited to Scopus-indexed journals
SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) SCImago Weighted citation prestige (citing journal quality matters) Free; broader coverage; less prestigious recognition than IF
SNIP Scopus Contextualises citation impact by field citation norms Corrects for field differences in citation behaviour
h5-index Google Scholar Metrics h-index calculated over last 5 complete years Covers grey literature and non-indexed journals
Eigenfactor Eigenfactor.org Influence based on total citation network (like PageRank) Less known; available in JCR
Acceptance Rate Published by some journals % of submitted manuscripts accepted Inversely correlated with prestige for many fields

Critical caveats:

  • Metrics vary dramatically by discipline — an IF of 3.0 is excellent in humanities, average in biology, and low in biochemistry
  • Do NOT compare IF across disciplines
  • Many high-quality journals are not indexed (new journals, regional journals) — absence from JCR does not mean predatory
  • Metrics should inform, not solely determine, your decision

Open Access Models

Model Description Who Pays When to Use
Gold OA Article immediately freely available; published in fully OA journal Author (APC) or funder When funder mandates immediate OA; budget available
Green OA Author self-archives accepted manuscript in repository Free for author When OA required but no APC budget; check embargo period
Diamond OA Fully OA journal with no APC — funded by institutions or societies No one (subsidised) Best option when available; growing in number
Hybrid Subscription journal with OA option for individual articles Author pays APC When journal requires subscription but OA mandate applies
Bronze Free to read but without open licence — can be revoked Publisher funded Least preferred; not truly open access

Read the full file on GitHub · 239 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 239 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 83f0afb9a1e6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

journal-selection is a skill published in the GitHub repository muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills (6 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 2,899 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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