Describe the issue or problem
The supervisor for our undergrad journal here (https://usurj.journals.usask.ca/ running OJS) noticed a super weird google scholar problem and I wondered if any of you have encountered it before.
Some journal articles are getting listed with metadata from their references in addition to their own metadata – usually the date and the publication name, that I’ve seen so far.
e.g. this paper from 2017 has 5 versions, and the date and publication are not the same for all of them:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=16448400909748574377&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
Listing with incorrect metadata:
Listing with correct metadata:
In the entries with incorrect metadata, it seems to originate in the paper’s references. See below for where 2001 and “Development” appear in the references list of the original paper:
I checked the metatags according to the PKP guide (https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/google-scholar/en/#check-for-consistency-in-the-publication-date), but they seem to be correct, it’s just the search results that are wrong.
Another example: the last reference is the 1969 Journal of Contemporary history, but the paper itself is from 2016:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=868637863792652414&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
(the metatags here are also correct)
This is the reference it seems to be pulling from:
Most worryingly, based on a few quick tests, it seems to mean the oldest date is being used when sorting by date which is not great if people are looking for recent resources…
Anyone else experienced this? I’m not sure how to fix it, since the metatags seem to be correct.
What application are you using?
Open Journal Systems 3.1.1.4
Additional information
The most recent two issues don’t have any articles with this problem, but I haven’t checked everything yet, so it’s possible this is an older problem that has been resolved, but these incorrect listings still exist (and I’d like to fix them if possible!)
Thanks in advance for any insight you may have!