paper-status-monitor

Monitor the peer-review status of your Elsevier submissions and keep one Excel history per manuscript.

Elsevier journals send authors a Track your submission link (https://track.authorhub.elsevier.com/?uuid=...) that shows the review status of a manuscript: reviewers invited, reviews completed, last review activity, revision number... paper-status-monitor checks those pages for you — for example every time you log in — records every change in an Excel workbook and opens a short report when something changes.

Paper status monitor - report
Run started: 2026-10-21 08:55:12

------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHANGES (1)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1st revision] A study of something important
  - Status: 'Under Review' → 'Required Reviews Complete'
  - Reviews completed: '1' → '2'
  Journal: Journal of Examples
  Manuscript number: ABC-D-26-00001R1
  Tracker: https://track.authorhub.elsevier.com/?uuid=...
  Workbook: C:\Users\me\Documents\paper-status-monitor\ABC-D-26-00001 - Journal of Examples - A study of something important.xlsx

Features

• No browser needed – reads the same JSON data as the official tracking page (no Selenium, ChromeDriver or Chrome).
• Excel history of every submission – every revision (R1, R2, …) is appended to the same workbook, with a Detected at timestamp for every change, and an optional Time in status sheet adds up how long each submission spent in each status.
• Your workbook names – build them from placeholders such as {paper}, {journal} or {manuscript_number}, add your own fields (e.g. paper = "Tau") to sort them by paper, or keep all the submissions of a paper to different journals in one workbook with workbook_name = "{paper}".
• You choose what matters – decide, column by column, which changes are recorded in the workbook and which are reported: for example, record a new Last review activity date without being notified, or be notified only when the Status changes.
• Change reports, desktop notifications and e-mails – a plain-text report is written only when something you care about changes, a new submission is tracked or a check fails; it can be opened for you, announced with a desktop notification (Windows, macOS, Linux), sent by e-mail through your SMTP server, or any of these.
• Command line or window – paper-status-monitor gui opens a graphical interface to manage submissions, notifications, workbook names and runs.
• English or Spanish – language = "es" writes the reports, notifications, e-mails and summary, and shows the window, in Spanish; the workbooks keep the same columns in every language.
• Runs at login – paper-status-monitor autostart enable adds a windowless launcher that runs at every login (a Startup shortcut on Windows, an XDG autostart entry on Linux, a launchd agent on macOS); it waits for the network and for cloud drives such as Google Drive or OneDrive to be ready, and with --every 12h it keeps checking while you stay logged in (on Windows, --tray adds an icon with the latest statuses to the notification area).
• Robust – retries on network errors, atomic workbook writes, a lock against concurrent runs, a rotating log file and a doctor command to diagnose problems.
• Detects the end of tracking – when the tracker stops returning data for a submission (usually after a final decision) the change is recorded once.

Quick start

pip install paper-status-monitor

paper-status-monitor init --data-dir "C:\Users\me\Documents\Paper status"
paper-status-monitor add "https://track.authorhub.elsevier.com/?uuid=<your-uuid>" --label "My paper" --field paper=Tau
paper-status-monitor run
paper-status-monitor autostart enable      # check at every login
paper-status-monitor gui                   # optional: do all of this from a window

Try it first with the public demo submission served by the tracker:

paper-status-monitor check 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

A few lines of the configuration file go a long way:

workbook_name = "{paper} - {journal} - {manuscript_number}"   # sorted by paper
notify_ignore = ["Last review activity"]                      # recorded, not reported
notify = ["report", "toast"]                                  # open it and notify

Commands

See the documentation for the configuration reference, the workbook format, running at login and troubleshooting.

Privacy and responsible use

• Your tracking links are personal: anyone with the link can see the status of your manuscript. They are stored only in your local configuration file, and the workbooks and reports stay on your computer.
• The tool only reads the status of submissions you configure, at a low frequency (typically once per login). Please keep it that way.
• This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by Elsevier. It relies on an undocumented endpoint that may change at any time.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md and, if you use an AI coding agent, AGENTS.md. The roadmap lives in TODO.md.

License

MIT © Daniel Sánchez-García