Indexed but Hard to Find: Why Some Regional Journals Remain Invisible

By Frimsi Wohon Nov 12, 2026 81 0

As fellow academics, lecturers, and researchers in Indonesia, we fully understand the concerns surrounding this issue. We often observe a paradoxical phenomenon in our higher education landscape: the number of published journals has surged sharply (especially following the implementation of mandatory publication policies), yet many of them are effectively “invisible”: they formally exist and are listed or indexed (for example, in SINTA or Google Scholar), but attract very little readership. Being indexed only means a journal's content has been recorded in a database or search system; it does not guarantee that readers will find, read, or cite it. In academic searches, these journals often appear only on later pages of results.

Factors Behind Low Discoverability

Weak OJS Metadata and Search Optimization: Many regional journals in Indonesia use the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, but many installations are left at default settings. Managers may overlook sitemap and other crawler-facing settings, configure article metadata (such as titles, keywords, and abstracts) incompletely or inconsistently, or not ensure that the site meets Google Scholar's technical inclusion guidelines.

Language Issues and Translation Quality: Many regional journals publish in Indonesian, or in English of uneven quality, sometimes relying on machine translation. This can limit discoverability: inconsistent or inaccurate titles, abstracts, and keywords may not match the terms researchers actually use when searching, especially international readers.

Technical Infrastructure Limitations: A common problem at some regional campuses: servers may be unreliable, the OJS site may load slowly, or SSL/HTTPS certificates may have expired. Unreliable access can prevent crawlers from consistently reaching article pages, and insecure or slow sites may be disadvantaged in general web search.

Discovery Systems That May Favor Established Publishers: The algorithms used by Google Scholar, Scopus, and Dimensions heavily prioritize domain authority (such as Elsevier, Springer, and IEEE) and the number of initial citations. Regional journals from local university domains (e.g., ejournal.unisampel.ac.id) are at a competitive disadvantage from the very first day of publication.

Prestige-Driven Citation Practices: Some Indonesian researchers may prefer to cite highly reputable international journals or SINTA 1–2 national journals, possibly to strengthen the perceived credibility of their own work. As a result, regional SINTA 4–5 journals, or those not yet accredited, may be cited less often, even by colleagues at the same university.

The KUM-Oriented Publication Culture in Indonesia

In Indonesia, publication is often driven by the need to earn KUM (angkakredit, or academic credit points) for lecturers' functional promotion, rather than solely by the aim of disseminating knowledge. When the focus is on “just getting published and obtaining the official appointment letter,” authors no longer care whether their articles will be read by anyone. Publishers are no different; their focus is on serving the administrative needs of lecturers, not on disseminating scientific or academic content.

Impacts on Journals, Researchers, and Institutions

If this so-called “ghost journal” phenomenon continues unchecked, it may seriously undermine the academic ecosystem. The term is used here for journals that are formally indexed but rarely found, read, or cited, not for predatory or fake journals. Its effects can be seen at several levels:

Journal Publisher: The energy, time, and university funds spent on managing journals will be wasted. Journals will struggle to advance to a higher SINTA tier or achieve international indexing because their citation rates are approaching zero or declining.

Published Articles: These articles become a “graveyard of ideas.” Research findings which may be based on high-quality field data go to waste because they are never read, never critiqued, and never built upon by other researchers.

For Researchers/Faculty Members: A researcher's digital footprint may not grow. Citation-based metrics, such as the h-index shown on Google Scholar and SINTA profiles, are unlikely to rise if the work is rarely cited. .When applying for DIKTI research grants, limited visibility and a thin citation record may weaken a researcher's track record in the eyes of reviewers, depending on the scheme's assessment criteria. .

Institutions/Affiliates: The university is losing potential points in the higher education clustering system. Research grants allocated by the university to faculty members are not yielding a return on investment (ROI) in the form of institutional reputation at the national or global level.

Reflections and Practical Solutions

As fellow lecturers and researchers, as well as editors and reviewers, we cannot simply complain. We must address the root of this problem with concrete solutions:

Strengthening OJS Management: Universities must begin to recognize the value of journal editors by providing them with appropriate incentives so that they are motivated to optimize OJS SEO, register with DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), and ensure that every article has an active DOI and is properly indexed in global metadata repositories such as Dimensions.

Change Researchers’ Mindset (Self Promotion): As authors and journal editors, we must not be passive. Once an article is published in a regional journal, we must “market” it. Upload the article to ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or ORCID; link to it on LinkedIn; or create a brief post about it on social media.

Institutional/Campus Policy: Institutions can support visibility by strengthening journals' technical infrastructure (hosting, security, and metadata), and by encouraging researchers to cite relevant work regardless of a journal's prestige. Citations should always be based on scholarly relevance, not quotas or institutional mandates.

Being indexed is only the first step. Indexing shows that a journal has been recorded in a database or search system; discoverability depends on metadata quality, technical accessibility, language, citation practices, and active dissemination. For editors, that means maintaining metadata and infrastructure; for researchers, sharing and citing work on its merits; and for universities, supporting both. The goal should shift from simply being listed to being findable, readable, and useful

Keywords

Regional Journal Open Journal System Search Engine Optimization Indexed Journal Ghost Journals KUM Oriented Culture Citation Formalities Search Engine Algorithms

Frimsi Wohon

Frimsi Wohon is an lecturer and researcher with a profound commitment to enhancing the quality of higher education. Having completed both his Bachelor of Education and Master of Education degrees in Christian Education at Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Transformasi Indonesia, he integrates his academic expertise with a research focus on Christian Education, Curriculum, Learning Models, and Digital Literacy. His track record as a lecturer and researcher at Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Transformasi Indonesia continues today through his full dedication at Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Pancasilacitta Malang.

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of their affiliated institutions, the Asian Council of Science Editors (ACSE), or the Editor’s Café editorial team.

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