Privacy Policy

Journal Check is an open-source project consisting of (1) this website at journal-check.com and (2) the Journal Check browser extension. This page explains what data each part collects, why, and how it is used. We do not sell, rent, or share personal data with third parties for advertising.

The journal-check.com website uses Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand aggregate traffic — page views, referrers, country, device type, and similar non-identifying signals. GA4 sets cookies in your browser for this purpose. We do not use GA4 advertising features, remarketing, or Google Signals.

You can opt out of GA at any time by installing the official Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, by enabling your browser's "Do Not Track" or tracking-prevention settings, or by blocking googletagmanager.com in a content blocker.

The Journal Check extension runs only on the four academic sites declared in its manifest:

• scholar.google.com
• pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• arxiv.org
• www.semanticscholar.org

On these pages it reads journal identifiers (DOI, ISSN, journal title, publication year) from the page DOM in order to look up ranking information. It does not read your browsing history, your search queries on other sites, form inputs, passwords, or any other personal content.

To resolve a ranking, the extension sends the extracted identifiers (DOI / ISSN / title / year) to our API at api.journal-check.com. These identifiers describe published works, not you. The request contains no account information, no cookies, and no personal identifiers. Standard server logs (IP address, user agent, timestamp) may be retained for a short period for abuse prevention and debugging, and are not joined with any other dataset.

The extension uses the storage permission to keep your preferences (such as which ranking systems to show) in your own browser. This data never leaves your device.

• No name, email, phone number, or account.
• No password, credit card, or other credentials.
• No reading history outside the supported academic sites.
• No data sold or shared with third-party advertisers.

We rely on a small number of infrastructure providers to deliver the service:

• Google Analytics — website analytics only.
• Cloudflare — hosting for journal-check.com and the API; processes requests and may retain short-term logs for security.

Journal Check is intended for academic and professional use and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children.

If this policy changes materially, we will update the "Last updated" date above and, for significant changes, note the change in the extension release notes.

Questions, data requests, or concerns can be sent to hello@journal-check.com.