Google Scholar Not Indexing Our DSpace 5.x Repository – Is Upgrade to 8.x Required?

[Vivek Kumar]

Dear DSpace Community,

We are currently running a DSpace 5.x repository and have noticed that Google Scholar is not indexing our content, even after waiting for several months.

We have already ensured the following:

• Our robots.txt file does not block paths like /handle, /bitstream, etc.

• All required metadata fields such as citation_title, citation_author, citation_date, and citation_pdf_url are present in the item pages.

• We have generated sitemaps using the generate-sitemaps script.

• The repository is publicly accessible with no login wall for metadata or downloadable files (PDFs).

• There have been no recent changes to the configuration.

Despite these efforts, none of our items appear in Google Scholar. We've tried reaching out to Google Scholar support via their inclusion form, but have not received any response.

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My question is:
Is it now mandatory to upgrade to DSpace 7 or 8 in order to ensure proper indexing by Google Scholar? Or could there be another issue specific to DSpace 5.x that we might be missing?

Any guidance, suggestions, or similar experiences from the community would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your support!

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi,

This is not a question we can easily answer, as it may require asking Google Scholar directly.  My "guess" though is that Google Scholar likely will still index a DSpace 5 site, but maybe there's a configuration issue, or you are accidentally blocking the Google Scholar bot (or the bot hasn't found your site yet).  DSpace has no way to control how/when Google Scholar indexes your site, so you'd need to contact Google Scholar directly.

That said, to be honest, DSpace 5 is very old now (first released in 2015).  So, an upgrade is necessary at some point if you want to ensure your site remains secure.  All DSpace releases <7.x.x have at least a few unpatched security vulnerabilities, which is what will eventually happen with all end-of-life releases.

You should also make sure that you are following all the DSpace recommendations for Search Engine Optimization, as these will allow Google Scholar bots to more easily index your site.  Here's the guidelines for DSpace 5: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC5x/Search+Engine+Optimization  However, there have been more improvements for DSpace 7/8/9, e.g. https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC8x/Search+Engine+Optimization

For Google Scholar's own troubleshooting tips, see https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html#troubleshooting  This guide also includes ways to contact Google Scholar.

Tim