Who makes it
The site is designed, built and maintained by Mohamed-Akram Lamhour (LinkedIn, GitHub). It started from a simple problem many researchers share: most "open access" journals charge authors an article processing charge (APC), and the lists of free journals that circulate online are often outdated, incomplete or unverified.
The site has no advertising, no paid placements, no accounts and no tracking. No journal or publisher pays to appear or to be ranked higher.
Where the data comes from
| Data | Source | Refreshed |
|---|---|---|
| Journal list, fees (APC and other fees), languages, country, publisher, review process, time to publication | DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals (CC BY-SA), topped up with the DOAJ API for journals added since the last export | 1st and 15th of each month |
| Scopus coverage, SJR, quartiles, h-index, subject areas and categories | SCImago Journal & Country Rank (latest yearly edition) | 1st and 15th of each month (new edition yearly) |
| Discontinued and removed Scopus titles | Elsevier’s official Scopus source title list | 1st and 15th of each month |
| Live indexing check by ISSN or DOI | Scopus API (Elsevier), queried when you use the Scopus check | Live |
| Aims & scope texts used by the AI matcher | Journals’ official websites and PJIP (CC BY-NC) | Periodically |
| Community-verified journals not yet in the DOAJ | Checked by hand against a short checklist (valid ISSN, peer-review policy, editorial board, explicit no-fee statement, recent issues) | Weekly |
| Conference deadlines and research events | The open ccfddl dataset (CCF and CORE ranks) and the CNRST events agenda | Weekly |
Today the finder covers 23,657 DOAJ journals, of which 14,571 are Diamond open access and 4,279 are also ranked in Scopus. Data snapshot: October 2026.
How journals are matched and ranked
- Diamond open access means the DOAJ records the journal with APC: no and other fees: no. Journals with any author fee are hidden by default; one click shows them too, with the fee converted to approximate US dollars.
- Scopus ranking: each DOAJ journal is matched to SCImago by its print or electronic ISSN. A journal with no match is shown as “unranked”: it may still be a good journal, it is simply not in Scopus.
- Quartile: SCImago assigns a quartile per subject category. The lists show a journal’s best quartile; category pages show the quartile in that category. Read how quartiles work.
- Discontinued titles (flagged “Scopus: discontinued”) come from Elsevier’s list, because SCImago’s coverage years alone can make a dropped journal look covered.
- Sorting on the static lists is by best quartile, then SJR. The interactive finder lets you sort and filter by any of these fields.
- The AI matcher runs a small language model (MiniLM) inside your browser and compares your title and abstract with each journal’s scope. Nothing you paste is uploaded.
Limits you should know
- DOAJ data is supplied by the journals themselves. Fees and policies can change between two refreshes: always confirm on the journal’s own website before submitting.
- A quartile is a statement about citations, not a guarantee of quality or fit for your paper.
- Being in the DOAJ is a strong signal against predatory publishing, but no list is perfect. See the predatory journal checklist.
- Community-verified journals are marked “Not in DOAJ”: they passed an automatic and manual check but have not been through the DOAJ’s own review.
Corrections and contact
Found a journal with wrong data, or a free journal that is missing? Write on LinkedIn with the journal’s ISSN and what is wrong or missing. Errors in journal records are best fixed at the source (DOAJ or SCImago), from where they flow back here with the next refresh.
Search 14,571 Diamond open access journals by subject, quartile, country and language. No sign-up, nothing uploaded.