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It is a requirement of my PhD to publish a certain number of papers. And for the papers to count, they need to be available online. I have deadline in my PhD study.

I have three papers accepted in one journal. It will take time to be online.

I can access my papers through ResearchGate but couldn't find them in Google search.

How I can find the articles in Google search from ResearchGate, without waiting for the journal publishing procedure in order to meet the requirements for my PhD?

Jeromy Anglim
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Fatin
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  • What field are your publications in? – Harry Apr 23 '17 at 23:15
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    Given that you already have the articles, why do you need to find them through ResearchGate or GoogleScholar? Is your goal actually to make the papers available online so that they are accessible on both ResearchGate and Google Scholar? And how is whether the articles are available or not online relevant to completing a PhD? If publication is a requirement for your PhD, then just provide some proof of publication from the publisher, or use the online first version. – Jeromy Anglim Apr 24 '17 at 03:27
  • Yeah to complete my PhD study I have to achieve the requirements of publication. Unfortunately the articles have just been accepted and the university said should be appear online. – Fatin Apr 24 '17 at 07:07
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    @Fatin Then google scholar and researchgate are irrelevant. Presumably, the university wants to see the publisher put the article online. Such a link will be on the publisher's website. Many journals provide an online copy quite soon after acceptance. However, there are exceptions which do not provide online access. – Jeromy Anglim Apr 24 '17 at 07:58
  • @Fatin Okay. I think I understand your question. I've updated it a bit to make your question clearer. – Jeromy Anglim Apr 24 '17 at 08:01
  • Usually journals are willing to confirm you that a paper has been accepted. Does your university not accept these confirmations? – Wrzlprmft Apr 24 '17 at 08:28
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    It seems a little odd, surely the test for a PhD should be content of publishable quality. Usually tested by publishing. Should a statement not be sufficient in the thesis stating the papers have been accepted be sufficient? – Richard Kavanagh Apr 24 '17 at 09:13

3 Answers3

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While every university is different, the following answer assumes common sense:

Whether an article is on ResearchGate or indexed by Google does not provide meaningful evidence that you have published an article.

When is a publication available online? An article is considered to be available online when it is available from the publisher's website. The delay between acceptance and online publication varies between journals. Some journal will put an accepted unproofed version of the manuscript up almost immediately. Other journals wait until proofs have been completed. This is often a few weeks after acceptance. Other journals have no "online first" version and you have to wait until the manuscript has been allocated to an issue, which can take anywhere from months to even a year or more.

For this reason, when evaluating a researcher or a PhD student, it often makes more sense to count publications once they have been accepted. This is especially true for PhD students. Now, for journals that make articles available online rapidly (e.g., less than a month after acceptance) then the difference between acceptance and online is minimal. However, where there is a major time lag, then it would be a stupid policy for a university to require a PhD student to have the publication actually published, as opposed to being accepted.

So in summary:

  • If you've published your articles in a journal with a short lag between acceptance and online access, then you might just want to wait a few weeks.
  • If you've published your articles in a journal with a long lag, then you should talk to your university about providing other evidence of proof of manuscript acceptance (e.g., editor acceptance letters).
Jeromy Anglim
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It's not clear whether you are talking about normal Google or Google Scholar. Since both seem to be built form the same web crawl, the answer in both cases is: Just wait. It will show up eventually. Be patient because it might take weeks or months.

Google's search result and Scholar's database is built from a web crawler that slowly visits pages on the web. There are details on this on Google Scholar's "Inclusion" documentation. Both Google and Google Scholar looks on ResearchGate and it will eventually find those papers.

It likely won't make a difference but if makes you feel better, you can submit the URL to be indexed by Google. Then you can at least be sure that Google knows about it.

mako
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Each journal provides an estimated period before its available online. In my area, this is now as short as 4 weeks. Check your journal(s) for the lead time. It is likely in the author guidelines somewhere along with the stub detailing the statistics for the journal.

It is unlikely that you will face any difficulty in its becoming online given the competitive nature of the industry (academic publishing) and access times being critical. What may happen is that because of embargo(s), sharing the documents may be logged/limited by the publisher to maximize his revenues.

As Jerome mentions, it is unlikely being on RG / SSRN counts as being available online for your purposes. It may suffice for those needing to refer to your work in their own academic effort, which is why you should put it up on SSRN/Research Gate

Suntropical
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