Fair questions, straight answers.

JClub is free on the App Store for iPhone and on Google Play for Android — both under Get JClub. On a computer, you can read in your browser at app.jclub.com.au, with the same account.

No. JClub works as a guest from the first launch — browse the feed, read papers, and personalise by interests without signing up. Anything you do as a guest stays on your device until you choose to sign in.

AI summaries are a convenience generated from the paper's abstract — a fast way to scan, not a substitute for the source. They can miss nuance, so for anything that matters rely on the original paper, which every card links to.

Every card links to the paper at its source. If you claim your institution in the app, paywalled papers open through your library. Where your library is on LibKey — most Australian universities and around 1,800 libraries worldwide — JClub first checks that your library lists the paper, so the card's full-text label means your library lists it; libraries not on LibKey are supported through their own proxy addresses, without that check (39 Australian university libraries today). Either way you sign in at your library's own page: JClub never sees your credentials. Where a free open-access copy exists, the card offers that too.

Yes, both. Connect your Zotero or Mendeley account once and every paper you save in JClub is automatically added to a “JClub” collection (Zotero) or folder (Mendeley) in your library — no exports, no .bib files. The sync is one-way and add-only: JClub sends bibliographic metadata (never PDFs or your reading activity), never edits or deletes anything in your library, and disconnecting deletes JClub’s access on our side (for Zotero we also ask it to revoke the key). Zotero is a registered trademark of the Corporation for Digital Scholarship and Mendeley is a trademark of Elsevier; JClub is independent and not affiliated with either.

Once you sign in: your account basics (name, email, profile photo) and what you set up in the app — saved papers and lists, follows, interests, alert keywords, settings and, if you choose them, your institution, library, ORCID iD and Zotero or Mendeley connection. To rank your feed we also keep your in-app reading activity. Everyone, signed in or not, gets a random device identifier that counts app use and limits how often a sponsored card is shown; as a guest, your papers and preferences stay on your device. The privacy policy lists everything and how long we keep it.

We never sell your personal data. JClub may show clearly labelled sponsored cards from organisations we work with directly — there are no third-party ad networks or trackers in the app, advertisers receive no data about you, and sponsored items never influence how your papers are ranked. We share data only with the infrastructure providers needed to run the service — never with data brokers or advertisers.

Yes. In the app, Settings → Delete account permanently removes your account and associated data, or email support@jclub.com.au at any time.

Every paper with an abstract leads with a concise AI summary. For open-access papers whose licence permits it, the full original abstract is one tap away; for others we show the summary and link out to the publisher. Either way, every card links back to the source of record.

No. Connected, it lets JClub rank by similarity to your own papers, switches on ‘Your work was cited’ alerts, and shows your works, funding and peer-review record on your profile. JClub reads public profile data only.

Three jobs. Interests rank your feed; a topic filter narrows your Home deck to exact matches for as long as you keep it on (it isn’t saved); and alert keywords (up to five, signed in) never touch the feed at all — they send you a push when a new title or abstract matches. Each one is drawn on Inside the app.

Home is the newest papers from the journals you track, ranked for you. Discover is the editorial layer over the same corpus: rails that each answer one question — For you, In your interests, Rising, Methods, New, Preprints, Open access, High impact, and Foundational papers from the last 1, 5, 10 or 20 years. The rails on Inside the app are real papers from the app’s Methods, High impact and Foundational rails on the date shown — the same titles, journals, dates, lead authors and citation counts the app displays, metadata only. In the app you scroll each rail yourself; here they glide so you can see more of them.

Usually within a few hours of a paper appearing online. JClub checks its index every few minutes, but PubMed, the preprint servers and OpenAlex each add their own lag, so we don’t promise minutes. Keyword alerts can be real-time, hourly or bundled daily; every kind is deduplicated, so you never get the same paper twice or a flood of old ones when you first follow someone. Author alerts fire for profiles JClub could verify.

Only the weekly digest is on by default and the daily digest is opt-in. On iOS the daily science brief may start as a quiet trial — delivered silently to Notification Center, no sound or banner, and iOS itself later asks whether to keep it — which you can switch off in Settings. JClub never shows a permission dialog at launch — only when you switch something on. Alerts are push notifications and an in-app inbox; if you turn it on, a paper you follow being cited can also come by email, at most once a day. Otherwise by email we send a welcome note when you first sign in and occasional product emails — tips and papers picked for you — each with a one-click unsubscribe.