What can I do to Get my Article Indexed in Google Scholar?

Although Google Scholar is a search engine specialized in finding those articles or publications available in Open Access, you will find that many times your article doesn't appear. There may be many reasons for this since Google Scholar indexing does not always work accurately. What you can do, however, is to make sure that you do everything you can to get your article indexed.

In this article, we give some recommendations for your article to be indexed more easily and we propose some alternatives in case your article is not yet shown in this search engine.

What does it mean for an article to be Indexed?

Indexing, in the broadest sense of the word, refers to putting order and creating an index with a series of data, so you can have easier access to them later. Applied to Google, it would refer to the crawling carried out by this tool to locate data and display them in the results of a search. This applies to both the web search engine and the academic search engine.

That is why it is important to index your article correctly in order to appear in this
search engine. Otherwise, your publication may be left out and not show up in the
search results.

How does Google Scholar index?

To appear in Google Scholar it is not necessary to register your journal or register
beforehand. In general, Google Scholar will search for articles and index them automatically.

For indexing, Google Scholar relies on the following information:

• Through the URLs of the articles. Every single article has to be identified by its own URL so that Google can locate each of them correctly.
• Through the information collected in the metatags of your academic article. These meta-tags give Google the necessary information to find your article. You can view the metatags of your article by accessing the HTML source, in the "citation_" part. This process can be used to check for errors in the information.

Why my Article does not Appear?

If your article doesn't appear in Google Scholar, or previously appeared and no longer appears, it may be due to inconsistencies that appear in the metadata. These inconsistencies may be the following:

• Incorrect publication dates in metatags.
• Mixing of different languages in metatags.
• The language of metadata is different from the language of the full article.
• Discrepancies in the author's name in the metadata.
• Authors are listed in a different order in the metatags.

Therefore, it is important to make sure that all this information has been entered correctly and that no inconsistencies are found within the article code.

Factors to Consider

In addition to the above, to have more chances of your article appearing in Google Scholar, you have to take into account the following:

• The article must be accessible and it's recommended to be published on an
  academic website. If your article is published on a personal website, Google may take longer to index it and, if it finds a broken link within the website itself, it may not be identified.
• The article must be transparent, free of advertising, and well-written.
• The article must be available. This refers both to the format of the article (pdf., that the document is not heavy), as well as that the document is complete and has no erroneous information.
• The subject matter of your paper may also affect your publication. Although
  Google Scholar is not restricted in terms of areas of study, it's true that some
  disciplines have less scope than others, also affecting your publication and
  the speed Google Scholar will index your content.
• Keep in mind that Google indexing is not immediate, so it may take some time for your article to be indexed correctly. In this case, it also influences where you publish. If you publish your article on an Open Access platform, rather than a personal website, it is possible that your article will be indexed earlier.

If my Article still does not Appear, what can I do?

If you have checked all of the above, and your article still doesn't appear, Google Scholar gives you the possibility to add it manually.

Once you have created your profile in Google Scholar, you can add those articles that do not appear in the search engine. To do this, go to the option Add article manually in your profile and a window will appear where you can fill in all the necessary data for your article. Google Scholar does not allow you to enter the full article but with the given data it will be easier to locate it for those interested readers and will help to complete your profile. If you want to know more about how to use Google Scholar, don't forget to visit our post How to publish in Google Scholar, where we explain the steps to follow to start using this search engine.

Tip: As we have mentioned, Google Scholar indexing takes some time to complete. If your article is recent, keep in mind that this may also be the reason why it does not yet appear in the search engine.

Orvium indexes with Google Scholar

Being indexed with Google Scholar can help disseminate your work and give it more reach. For indexing, it is advisable to publish in Open Access, to facilitate the access of your article in a faster way.

If you are looking for a platform to publish on, Orvium is your place. We make sure that your publications are indexed correctly with Google Scholar and OpenAire, in addition to facilitating the publication process and meeting your academic needs.

If you want to know more about us, visit our website and discover our platform, where you can find all the articles we have submitted.