Mr Researcher

Journal Vitals

Check a journal before you submit: dated facts from official sources, in one place. Beta · Free · Open the tool

Open Journal Vitals →

What it does

Journal Vitals shows the vital signs of 76,779 journals: whether each one is still publishing, which indexes list it now or listed it before, its publication fee, its official website, its subjects, and what it actually publishes. Every fact has its source and date. It also covers journals that are hard to find elsewhere: journals from the Gulf (GCC) and the wider region, new journals, and journals not yet in the major indexes. It is for researchers, students, librarians and universities.

How to use it

  1. Search by title or ISSN, or browse by subject, country, index or region.
  2. Open the journal’s profile and read its vital signs: publishing activity, indexes now and before, fees, website, subjects.
  3. Before you submit, use the “Before you submit” checklist on the profile and check the journal’s own website.

Features

  • Still publishing? Articles per year from Crossref and OpenAlex, and the latest issue on the journal’s own website.
  • The full indexing story: MEDLINE, PubMed Central, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL, APA PsycInfo and DOAJ, now and before, with dates.
  • Regional journals: journals from the Gulf (GCC) and the wider region, including national lists and regional indexes.
  • New and forthcoming journals.
  • Cost for your country: the publication fee from the journal or publisher, with waivers where they are stated.
  • What it publishes: study designs, main topics, and the countries of most authors.
  • Before you submit: review speed, peer review, plagiarism check, licence, archiving, and a warning when a fake copy of the journal’s website is known.
  • Compare up to four journals side by side.
  • Share card: an image of a journal’s vital signs for LinkedIn, X or Facebook.
  • Report an error on any fact; a person checks every report.
  • English, Arabic and Persian.

Why use it

Journal Vitals brings together, in one free place, what is usually scattered across publishers’ sites, subscription databases and lists that are months out of date. It shows facts, never scores or labels: it does not rate journals and never calls a journal “predatory”. The decision stays with you.

How it was built and tested

The data come from open and official sources and are joined by fixed rules, with each fact keeping its source and date. Subjects were checked in independent blind tests, and a pre-registered accuracy test of the indexing and activity data is under way (OSF). An AI assistant helped write the build scripts and suggested subjects for some regional journals; a person checked those suggestions, and each decision is recorded. How Journal Vitals was built

Limits

  • This is the first version, so some facts will be wrong or out of date. Each fact shows its date.
  • “Not recorded” means we found no record, not “no”.
  • Some regional journals have no subject yet, or only a “possible” subject, shown in grey.
  • Citation metrics such as impact factor and quartile are not shown.

Your data

Nothing to store. You do not enter any text about yourself or your manuscript. The tool sets no cookies. It remembers your language and country choice in your own browser only; that choice is never sent to us. If you send feedback or an error report, we keep it without your IP address for 12 months. See Privacy Policy.

Notes for this tool

These notes apply together with our Terms of Use.

  • No quality labels. Journal Vitals does not rate, rank or judge journals, attaches no negative labels, and shows no paid metrics.
  • Indexes. An index entry only states that the journal appears on that index’s official list on the date shown. Index names are trademarks of their owners; Journal Vitals is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.
  • Fees. Confirm the fee on the journal’s website before you submit.
  • Country. “Country of journal” is the country of the journal or its owner, which can differ from the publisher’s country. A country taken only from a regional list is marked “as listed in …”.

Sources

DOAJ (CC BY-SA 4.0), OpenAlex (CC0), Crossref, the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the official lists of Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL and APA PsycInfo, national journal lists and regional indexes, Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, and journals’ own websites. Full list on the How it was built page.

Version

Beta · data v32 (26 October 2026) · site v32.1