Tired of feeling behind on your reading? Journalier helps you keep up with what's happening in the academic world. Select your favorite journals, and Journalier collects their latest papers from Crossref, providing a terminal-based reader for keeping track of new, unread, and saved papers.
After installing Journalier, run it by typing
journalier
in your terminal to see what's new in your selected journals.
Journalier also has a search function, which you can access by pressing / and typing your keywords. Searches cover author names as well as words in the title or abstract. In the example above, I searched for papers containing the word "transport".
Journalier requires Julia 1.12 or later. Crossref collection needs an internet connection.
Install Journalier using Julia's package manager. In the Julia REPL, press ] to enter package mode, then run:
pkg> app add JournalierThe journalier launcher is installed under ~/.julia/bin by default. Add that directory to your PATH if it isn't already included, then run in your terminal:
> journalierPkg's app support is experimental. For users working from a local checkout, the repository's bin/journalier launcher remains available as an alternative.
On the first interactive launch, Journalier asks for an optional Crossref contact email if the config file is missing. It creates a missing database, seeds the six starter economics journals, and attempts an initial Crossref collection. If that request fails, Journalier tells you to retry with journalier collect.
Without an interactive terminal, it skips the email prompt and creates a blank config. You can also run journalier init to perform first-run setup explicitly; journals can be managed from the TUI. journalier paths prints the active locations, and journalier config shows the configuration values.
The TOML file accepts these settings:
mailto = "reader@example.org"
records_per_journal = 100mailto identifies the Crossref API client; when it is blank, Journalier uses CROSSREF_MAILTO if set. records_per_journal controls the maximum number fetched for each journal and must be between 1 and 1000. The file lives in the platform's user configuration directory.
On Linux, the defaults are ~/.config/journalier/config.toml, ~/.local/share/journalier/papers.db, and ~/.local/state/journalier/collector.log; XDG environment variables override those roots.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
journalier or journalier tui |
Open the terminal reader. |
journalier collect |
Fetch recent records from registered journals. |
journalier list |
Print stored papers. |
journalier schedule install [--time HH:MM] |
Enable daily collection at 07:00 by default. Linux uses a systemd user timer when available and falls back to cron. Requires the installed journalier executable on PATH. |
journalier schedule status |
Report the detected schedule. |
journalier schedule remove |
Remove Journalier's managed schedule. |
journalier help |
List the commands. |
Scheduling is opt-in. Cron output is appended to collector.log in the per-user state directory. Systemd captures service output in the user journal; view it with journalctl --user -u journalier-collect.service.
Schedules retain the XDG configuration, data, and state settings used at installation. Reinstall the schedule after changing these settings. Crontab read errors abort installation instead of replacing existing jobs.