Navigate Scholarly Publishing with Confidence

Scilene is an open-source platform that helps researchers discover the right academic journals for their work — and understand why each one is recommended. Every match is backed by a transparent, plain-language explanation rather than an opaque score.

Long term, Scilene is growing beyond journal discovery into a broader research intelligence platform: a tool that helps researchers understand, interpret, and navigate the scholarly landscape, not just search it.

Many existing journal finders return a ranked list without explaining their reasoning — relying on paid services or prestige-based scoring instead. Scilene was created as a transparent alternative: recommendations grounded in verifiable, publicly available scholarly metadata, with every match paired with a plain-language explanation of why it's there.

Scilene combines Sci, for science, with Selene, the Greek personification of the moon.

The moon has long served as a natural guide for navigation and exploration. In the same way, Scilene aims to guide researchers through an increasingly complex scholarly landscape toward the right journals, literature, and decisions — guidance through science, rather than just a search over it.

The mark is the letter "S," traced by a subtle, abstract crescent meant to suggest an orbit or research journey — only a very quiet nod to Selene, not a literal moon. Above it, a small gold star stands in for a guiding star: discovery, direction, and confidence.

Scilene's core recommendation engine is designed to work without depending on external APIs or an internet connection. Optional AI-assisted features may be added later, but they will never become mandatory for getting a recommendation.

Scilene's core recommendations come from a deterministic, explainable ranking engine, not a black box. An opt-in AI Semantic Search mode is also available — it ranks journals by embedding similarity between your text and each journal's profile instead of keyword matches, and can surface different results. It's always a separate, clearly-labeled choice, never a hidden influence on the default search.

Scilene is developed in the open so that anyone can inspect how recommendations are produced, suggest improvements, or contribute new features.

Transparency in code is the same principle as transparency in recommendations — nothing about how Scilene works should be hidden from the researchers who rely on it.

Scilene aims to become a trusted, open-source reference tool for journal selection — and, over time, a broader research intelligence platform that helps researchers navigate scholarly publishing with confidence.

Every new feature is measured against the same question: does this make Scilene more transparent, more understandable, or more useful to a researcher deciding where to submit their work?