wtf is research-submission-tracker?

Research and Submission Tracker is a free, offline dashboard built for PhD students and academics who need to keep track of the papers they are writing and the journals they are submitting to. It replaces spreadsheets or paid subscription tools with a single HTML page, a plain JSON data file, and a Python script that scans your paper folders directly on your own computer. There is no internet connection required, no account to create, and nothing to install beyond Python itself. The dashboard has two main views. The writing pipeline shows every paper you are currently drafting as an expandable card, with a stage label such as ready to submit, in drafting, stalled, idea, or complete. Each card lists word counts, the date the paper was last touched, and every file inside that paper's folder, automatically tagged as things like an anonymous manuscript, an author manuscript, a cover letter, or supporting material. The submissions view covers papers that are already with a journal, showing a status such as under review, accepted, published, or needing a new venue, along with the full history of which journals were tried and what happened with each one. To use it, you download the repository into the same folder where you keep your paper folders, rename a sample data file to data.js, and run the included Python scanner script. The scanner automatically finds new, renamed, moved, or deleted paper folders and updates word counts and dates on its own. Journal decisions cannot be detected automatically, so those get typed in by hand, which the author says takes about a minute. The scanner can also be automated to run on a schedule using cron or Windows Task Scheduler. The project is released under the MIT license, meaning anyone can use, modify, and share it freely, and it was built by a PhD candidate in International Relations with help from an AI assistant.