Journal-Match (rt-journal-match)

The missing front-door question — which venue? — across the whole repository. Full methodology + the stable venue index live in shared-resources/journal-selection/journal-match.md and venue-index.tsv.

When to trigger

• The author has a result/draft and no settled target.
• A paper was rejected and needs the best next venue.
• A "not a fit" signal means the scope/venue needs rethinking.

What it does

1. Profile the paper — discipline + subfield, method/design, contribution type, setting/data/region, ambition (be honest).
2. Shortlist from venue-index.tsv by discipline / lane / region (long-tail venues → the discipline breadth bundle).
3. Score each candidate on Fit × acceptance-odds × turnaround × cost/policy × audience, reading the live facts from each candidate's resources/official-source-map.md.
4. Return reach / match / safe (≈2–3 each) with one-line rationales + the live facts, then a submit order and resubmission ladder.

Hard rules

• Live facts from the source-map, never from memory (fees, acceptance, turnaround, page limits, data policy).
• Fit judgment defers to the venue's *-topic-selection / *-contribution-framing.
• Be honest about odds; don't inflate a paper into a reach it can't clear.
• Coverage honesty: if a plausible venue is outside the index and its bundle, say so.

Output format

【Paper profile】discipline / method / contribution / setting / ambition
【Reach】V — why; key live facts (desk-reject, turnaround, fee)
【Match】V — …
【Safe】V — …
【Submit order & ladder】V_top → if reject → V_next (what to change) → …
【Open questions】facts to re-verify in the source-map before submitting

Anti-patterns

• Recommending only reaches (wastes the timeline) or only safes (undersells the paper).
• Ignoring lane — sending a qualitative/theory paper to an empirical-only venue.
• Treating the tier column as a precise ranking (it is an indicative bucket).

Next: once a target is chosen, rt-execution-bridge to run the analysis and rt-submission-readiness to check the bar.