How Public is the Web?: Robots, Access, and Scholarly Communication

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Date

1998

Journal Title

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Publisher

Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics

Abstract

This paper examines the use of "Robot Exclusion Protocol" to restrict the access of search engine robots to 10 major American university websites belonging to institutions recently named among "AmericaÕs Most Wired" universities (Gan, 1997). An analysis of web site searching and interviews with web server administrators at these sites shows that the decision to use this procedure is largely technical and is typically made by the web server administrator. The implications of this decision for openness in scholarly communication and for the future of academic, university-based web publishing are discussed.

Description

Keywords

social informatics, Robot Exclusion Protocol, universities

Citation

Snyder, H. and Rosenbaum, H., How Public is the Web?: Robots, Access, and Scholarly Communications, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 35, 453-462.

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Working Paper