Error in collecting data from Google Scholar

Software Support
1

Hello,

Soon I received a notification from a Google developer, the content of the message follows below:

'm getting in touch because I am hoping to find the right person to discuss a indexing problem for www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br.

Scholar’s automated indexing system has noticed that there is a systematic error in the publication date for articles on www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br. I have included an example at the end of this message. This error impacts the indexing of articles on www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br. It also reduces the number of citations to these articles the indexing system is able to identify - as a result, these articles don’t rank as well in search results as they should.

Fortunately, there is an easy-to-apply fix for this problem that colleagues at OJS/PKP have made available. This fix is available here.

We strongly recommend this fix. If it would be possible to apply the fix and let me know once it is in place, I can ask Scholar engineers to update indexing to take this into account.

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you,

Shiva Kumar

Someone like the same problem? It’s safe? The suggested fix applies to OJS 3.1.1.4 but the version we use is 2.4.8.3.

Thanks!

2

Hi @Nathalia_Avila,

That change is only applicable to OJS 3.0.0, 3.0.1, and 3.1.0.

The same code in OJS 2.x is implemented in a different place. OJS 2.4.8-3 already has the logic that the above change would introduce, so nothing should be needed on your part.

I would suggest two things:

  • Send this thread to your contact at Google Scholar to let them know that the change they propose isn’t relevant to your version of OJS, which already has that logic in place.
  • Double-check that your article publication dates are correct. The issue they’re referring to is probably related to article publication dates looking “wrong”.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Thanks @asmecher!
I’ll do it the way you suggested.