Search Engine Optimization can help researchers who publish drive usage, readership and citations of their articles to raise the visibility of their research. Whether an article is being indexed by the academic search engines is crucial, but it is also important where an article lands in the ranked search results list as that ranking will greatly impact the visibility of an author’s research. Items high on the list are more likely to be read.
Access and Citations
Is your article being indexed by academic search engines like Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore and PubMed or is it only accessible via subscription databases the search robots can’t access to index so the contents do not show in academic search engines?
When submitting an article for publication, authors should consider how easily discoverable their research will be to their audience and enhance opportunities for citation. Open-access articles receive more citations than articles accessible only by purchase or subscription.
Authors will benefit from selecting publishers and journals with policies that cooperate with Google Scholar (and other search academic engines) because it makes their published research articles available to more readers and facilitates more citations. Citations are a significant factor in determining rank in results pages of Google Scholar and many other academic search engines. If a journal is not online, authors should favor those who allow authors to put their articles on their or their institutions’ home pages and/ or repositories.