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Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

6-2025

Citation

Kathleen Shearer and Paul Walk, "The impact of AI bots and crawlers on open repositories: Results of a COAR survey," April 2025 June 3, 2025. https://coar-repositories.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Report-of-the-COAR-Survey-on-AI-Bots-June-2025-1.pdf 

Abstract

There are a growing number of AI bots crawling repositories. These automated bots, or crawlers, navigate the internet, gathering data and indexing information for search engines, AI and large language models, and other purposes. While some bots are rather innocuous, others are sufficiently aggressive that they are increasingly causing service disruptions in repositories (and other scholarly communications infrastructures). To learn more about the current state and gain a better understanding about the impact of bots and crawlers on repositories, COAR distributed a survey to members in April 2025. The survey received 66 responses from repositories around the world (22 from Canada and US, 22 from Europe, 9 from Latin America, 6 from Asia, 4 from Australasia, 2 from Africa, and 1 unknown).

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