This post provides an example to illustrate why a research author should not assume that every article of theirs will be properly indexed. As result, this work may not be seen by potentially interested parties searching for pertinent work with salient keywords, despite the work's merits. Metadata mismatches and broken linkages can unwittingly emerge during academic publishing, and may persist if not checked and corrected. This post gives helpful advice for correcting a few key problems, sharing the practical example of errors that impacted a South African journal article's availability after its digital publication on the 1st of December, 2025:

As a research blogger, I like to share Altmetrics badges for my publications, but none is available for Branjacked via badge.dimensions.ai/details/doi/10.10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2?domain=https://journals.co.za (see Figure 3).

Thinking that this may have been caused by the manual record I created featuring the initial DOI, I chose to delete the article from my record. Then went into Google Scholar trash and selected ‘Delete Forever’. However, the article available for manual selection (Figure 5) still links to a '404 not found' result.

A manual entry created on ResearchGate (at  researchgate.net/publication/398814505_Brandjacked_for_social_media_advert_fraud_Microcelebrities'_experiences_of_digital_crime_in_South_Africa) lists the correct DOI (Figure 6), but it also showed a '404 not found' error when attempting to link to the digital publication.

As a shortcut for checking-and-reporting DOI errors, authors should open www.doi.org, then scroll down to the 'Try resolving a DOI name' section. There they can enter a DOI value to check it, and report a DOI URL address that fails in throwing a '404 not found' error.  

Acta Criminologica’s ‘Open Access’ policy initially provides restricted access via the South African Bibliographic and Information Network (SABINET)'s archives. These are available via university libraries’ annual SABINET subscription for SABINET African Electronic Publications (SA_ePublications). There is a 12-month open access embargo from the date of publication/loading on
the Criminological Society of Africa (CRIMSA)’s website. Perhaps being published before the Christmas holidays in an access restricted format contributed to Brandjacked only being downloaded five times in the first two months. But even achieving that readership is not been helped by a ghost-listing amidst a heavy stream of academic publications. As Trend MD reports, nearly 8,000 research articles are published everyday. In this flood of articles, the visibility of our niche publication is not helped by being poorly indexed. Consequently, it is vital to work with the journal, their publisher, and one's co-authors to work around and, hopefully remedy any root causes of the problem.