A scientific article is a tool for achieving such goals as obtaining academic degrees and titles, participating in grant competitions, obtaining visas, career development, or disseminating research results in the international scientific community. However, sometimes a problem arises when, after publication, it is impossible to find the article indexed in Scopus or Web of Science. We will tell you how to act in this situation in this article.
What is indexing a scientific article?
Indexing a scientific article is the process of entering information about an article into a particular scientometric database after its official publication in a journal. Indexing makes it possible to search for an article, cite it by other researchers, and increases the visibility of scientific work in the global academic community.
The indexing process begins when basic information about the article is published on the journal's official website: title, list of authors, keywords, abstract and other necessary metadata.
Indexing a scientific article in large scientometric databases, such as Scopus or Web of Science, does not happen instantly. After being published in a journal, an article goes through several stages of processing: technical verification, verification of compliance with database policies, and automatic or manual entry into the system. Due to the high workload, processing priority, and complexity of the indexing process, this can take several weeks or more.
Indexing a scientific article in Scopus
Scopus is one of the largest international scientometric databases that indexes scientific journals, conference proceedings, and books. Scopus is searched by various parameters, including author name, article title, and keywords. The search results display full information about the author, his or her research papers, as well as the main scientometric indicators, including the number of citations.
Scopus indexing periods:
The average indexing period is from 14 to 90 days from the date of the article's official publication.
You should start monitoring the availability of an article in the database approximately 1 month after publication, as there may be no results before that due to the technical and procedural peculiarities of the indexing process.
Before publishing a scientific article, check whether the journal is indexed in the database. In our article, we have described how to check indexing in Scopus. Also, Scientific Publications regularly publishes news and a list of journals excluded from the database.
How to check the indexing of an article in Scopus?
- Check through Crossref or DOI. Find the DOI of the article and check it through https://search.crossref.org/. If the article is correctly registered in Crossref, it means that everything is fine with the metadata. If there is no article in Crossref or the DOI is incorrect, you should first resolve this through the journal.
- Scopus Sources API. This is a technical way to check whether the journal issue is visible to the Scopus database through open APIs. If this metadata is already available, but the article is not yet displayed, you just need to wait a little longer.
- Contact the journal's editorial board. The author can contact the editorial board of the journal in which the results of his or her research were published with an official request for information about the status of the article's indexing. To do this, just send an email or use the contact form on the journal's website. In your request, it is advisable to indicate the exact title of the article, information about the authors, the number and date of the journal's issue, and ask a specific question about its indexing in the relevant scientometric databases.
- Involvement of Scopus Support. To contact the support service, you should fill out a form with your email address, personal data, and the subject of the request; after processing the request within 48 hours, you will either receive a direct response or a contact email address for further communication, given the current overload of the Scopus support service.
Indexing in Web of Science
After publishing an issue of the journal, the editorial board fills out a special form for submitting the issue to the Web of Science database. This form contains information about the issue of the journal, including the titles of articles, authors, and additional metadata. After that, the Web of Science (WoS) team receives the submitted materials and sends them to the data processing department, where the articles are added to the database.
There are various collections in Web of Science (Core Collection, ESCI, SSCI, AHCI, etc.), and if a journal is excluded from the relevant collection, new articles may not be indexed in the database.
The average indexing period is from 20 to 90 days after publication.
How to check indexation in Web of Science?
- Check indexation on the search page. To check whether your article has been indexed in Web of Science, you need to have access to the WoS database through your university or research institution account. To do this, go to the Web of Science search page, enter the title of the article, the author's name or surname, or other data in the appropriate field, and check whether your publication appears in the results.
- Indexing in the author's personal account. In the author's Web of Science personal account, the author can check whether his or her research has been indexed. However, sometimes there are cases when even an indexed article is displayed in the profile as not indexed. This may be due to technical problems or delays in updating information. In this case, you should contact Web of Science support to clarify the situation. Usually, it takes up to one month to fix it.
- Check the DOI and Crossref. In this case, you should repeat the steps above: check the correctness of DOI registration through Crossref; if the DOI is assigned and the article is not yet displayed in WoS, this may be due to a normal delay in updating the database.
- Contacting Web of Science support. Through the Clarivate portal, you can submit an official request on the topic of ‘Missing Article’ by providing a full bibliography of the article, a link to the article's page on the journal's website, DOI, and confirmation of the journal's indexing in WoS. Requests are usually considered within 6-8 weeks, after which the article is either added to the database or a reasonable refusal is provided.
If, after three months, the article has not been indexed, you should contact Scopus and Web of Science technical support. They can provide detailed information about the reasons for the delay and inform you if additional actions are required on your part or on the part of the journal's editorial board.
Why is my article not being indexed?
- Problems on the part of the journal. The article metadata was not transferred to the database or was submitted incomplete or incorrect.
- The journal is under review. Sometimes a journal may be at the stage of verification or updating its status in scientometric databases. In such cases, even after publication, the article may not appear in the database immediately. It can take several months for a journal to be verified, which affects the time it takes to index articles.
- Loss of indexing in the database by the journal. Sometimes journals lose their indexation due to changes in the quality of publications, a decrease in the number of citations, violations of standards, or other factors. In such cases, articles published in such journals will not be indexed or found in databases.
- Non-compliance with database requirements. Articles may be rejected for indexing if they do not meet the requirements of the database (for example, the absence of certain metadata, such as DOI, or non-compliance with the standards of scientific publication).
- Problems with the issue. The problem may be related to the issue of the journal: it has not yet been officially closed for submission to the database or, although the issue has already been published, information about it has not been processed due to delays on the part of the publisher or the database itself.
- Problems with a scientific article. Possible reasons include the absence or incorrectness of a DOI, lack of translation of the title, abstract, and keywords into English, as well as errors in the data about the authors or their affiliations.
Before submitting an article to a scientific journal for further publication, it is necessary to carefully and carefully choose the publication to be sure of the result. It is important to pay attention to the journal's performance indicators, reputation, history, etc. Make sure that the journal adheres to scientific standards.
Get guaranteed indexing of your scientific article by contacting Scientific Publications. Thanks to our many years of experience and official cooperation, you will receive a guaranteed result after signing the contract. We will help you choose a journal with the required direction and subject matter, and accompany you at all stages of publication. Get a free consultation with our manager by filling out the form below. Together we will achieve successful publication and indexing!
