Automated scraping of content from publisher websites, library catalogs, and other repositories is reaching epic proportions, with automated traffic exceeding human traffic for the first time in over a decade. The impact on the scholarly community is significant. The most visible and immediate consequence is that sites struggle to respond, or go down, as their servers are overwhelmed by high-volume, scripted requests. The less visible medium-term consequence is poisoning of the usage data that our community relies on to justify OA business models. Longer term, robotic access has more profound implications for the sustainability of open research and services.
This panel brings together four leading technologists from across our community, each with diverse perspectives on publishing and libraries. Drawing from their hands-on experience in dealing with bot traffic, this session will introduce attendees to the scale of the problem, describe how it’s impacting service delivery, and explore possible solutions.
