Following the announcement that Publications Router will retire as a Jisc-hosted service on 1 July 2026, its full code base has now been released under an open licence. This enables organisations worldwide to reuse, adapt and deploy their own instances without waiting for the service’s formal closure.
Full documentation
Comprehensive documentation is available across the code repositories, including extensive comments within the code itself. While Jisc will not provide ongoing support or host a community around the software, the documentation is intended to enable organisations to understand, deploy and extend the codebase independently.
How to access the code
The code and documentation is available in five GitHub repositories located here: https://github.com/jisc-services.
| Git repository | Contents |
| oa-PubRouter-App | Publications Router application specific source code (mainly Python) and comprehensive suite of documentation |
| oa-python-sword2 | Library of Python code implementing a SWORD2 Client & Server |
| oa-PubRouter-Octopus | Library of general-purpose Python functions that are used by the application. (Note this is not related to the Octopus.ac service.) |
| oa-PubRouter-Build-Tools | Information on tools used to build and deploy the Publications Router service (including , PyPi and NGINX) |
| Public-Documentation | User-oriented documentation for Publications Router service:
· API & notification structures · Information on Router’s use of JATS · XML structures used for SWORD2 submissions · Router release history |
What happens next?
Organisations may choose to reuse the code in a variety of ways, including running local instances, adapting components for other notification workflows or using the codebase as a reference implementation for similar services.
About publications router
Router is a service that populates repositories automatically by capturing article notifications, often including the full text and other files, and then matching and delivering them to the repositories or CRISs of the institutions to which the authors are affiliated.
When it retires on 1 July 2026, it will have been an active Jisc service for almost 10 years, having officially launched (after earlier prototype and pilot phases) in August 2016.
In 2025, it matched over 235 000 article notifications (before deduplication) to the 81 participating institutions from 22 publishers and three secondary sources (Crossref, PubMed and Europe PubMed Central).
Find out more
If you have questions about accessing or reusing the codebase, please get in touch via our central helpdesk at help@jisc.ac.uk, mentioning Publications Router in your message.