I was on the wrong journal's website, and what I rechecked afterward

On August 23 I was filling in a journal's form for sending in a paper when a checkbox asked me to agree to a required publication fee. The journal I meant to use charges nothing, which was part of why I chose it, so I read the name at the top of the site and found I was on a different journal's site.

The two journals' names differ by one word and an ending. The one I wanted had been offline all day, so every search I ran led to the other. Nothing was sent and nothing was owed; I left the half-filled form with a note to delete it.

The bigger problem was what I had read on the wrong site before then. Earlier that day I had written down that my journal used a large publisher's online system for new papers and its standard requirements. That was true of the other journal. I had also split my paper into four files, because that is what the other journal asks for; mine takes one file with the author's details on the first page. None of these notes looked wrong, because I had written them down under the right journal's name.

Now, when I find I have been reading the wrong source, I go back to the moment the detour started and recheck every fact I wrote down after it, against the source I meant to use. Both corrections from that day are in my records as new, dated lines.

I also wrote down the warning sign for next time: if a page for a journal I believe is free mentions a fee or a preprint server (a site where papers are posted before review), I am on the wrong page.

Drafted with Claude, like everything here, and checked against my research record before it went up.