Journal platform migration checklist.

Before the move

1. Inventory every address. Article pages, PDF and other full-text files, issue and archive pages. Combine the platform export, the sitemap and Search Console, so nothing known to Google is missing.
2. Take a dated baseline. Search Google Scholar for the exact titles of 20 to 50 sampled articles and record what returns. Save the Search Console indexed-page count and a list of DOI-to-URL pairs from Crossref. You will compare against this after the move.
3. Write the URL map. One old address to one new address, page to page. A redirect to the home page is not a map.
4. Plan the DOI update. DOIs do not change. The resource URL stored in the DOI record does, and it must be updated at launch so the DOI lands on the new address.
5. Test metadata on staging. For sampled articles, the citation_* tags must match the visible article and the PDF, and citation_pdf_url must return a real PDF. Run the free check on the staging copies.
6. Keep staging out of the index. Staging should be closed to crawlers, and the block must be removed on the live site at launch. Check both.

At launch

1. Switch on the redirect map before the new site is public.
2. Set one canonical address per article; avoid duplicate paths such as http and https, with and without www, index.php variants.
3. Publish a sitemap of the new addresses and submit it in Search Console.
4. Update the DOI resource URLs in Crossref.
5. Confirm robots.txt allows crawlers and does not carry the staging block.

After the move

1. Day 1: fetch a sample of old addresses and confirm each ends on the right new page with HTTP 200.
2. Week 1: read the Search Console coverage and crawl-stats reports; look for 404s that Googlebot is requesting.
3. Weeks 2, 6 and 12: repeat the Scholar baseline and compare with the first one. Scholar re-crawls slowly, so judge by the trend, not a single check.
4. Keep the redirects for at least a year, as Google recommends for site moves.

If the journal runs on OJS

• The Google Scholar Indexing plugin must be enabled on the new installation. It produces the citation tags.
• PDF galleys must be reachable at a direct address, not only through an embedded viewer page.
• Full text must not sit behind a login or a gate that crawlers cannot pass.
• See the OJS indexing guide for the common failures.

Digital Commons and Scholastica

We publish only what we have checked against a platform’s own documentation. Platform-specific steps for Digital Commons and Scholastica are not covered yet, so none are listed here. The general steps above apply to both.

Sources

• Google Scholar: Inclusion Guidelines for Webmasters
• PKP: Google Scholar Indexing Guide for OJS
• Google Search Central: site move with URL changes