We have a website hosting some journals on OJS. These journals were indexing normally on Google Scholar. However, in January of this year (2025), we had a security breach on the site with the inclusion of malicious code that caused search engines (e.g., Google) to respond to online gambling sites. As soon as we detected the issue, it was fixed (we updated OJS; we were using OJS-3.2.1-4).
Google search has already updated its search results, and I can search all journals and their articles normally, with the correct results. However, the website/journals have not yet returned to indexing on Google Scholar.
We are currently using OJS 3.3.0-19. Is there anything we can do? I’ve already emailed Google Scholar support, but have received no response.
Has anyone else encountered the same issue?
Hi @williamm if you have already fixed the website’s security breach,and the website can be visited, you don’t need to do anything,Google Scholar will automatically crawl and restore it after some time.
Hi @deanting, but how long will it take for this reindexation to occur? It’s been more than seven months since the security breach was fixed.
Hi @williamm,
Unfortunately we here at PKP have no insight into how this works at Scholar. There is a contact email address you could try, but we’ve heard anecdotally that it isn’t responsive.
Thanks,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team