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Statistics

Overview

Access statistics for ZORA can be viewed in several ways:

  • via the “Statistics” menu item: Displays statistics for the entire ZORA repository.
  • via “Communities & Collections,” within the University of Zurich’s organizational units. Navigate to the desired organizational unit (faculty, department, institute), then click the “Statistics” button.
  • via a ZORA publication : Select the “Statistics” tab on the item's detail page

The statistics include:

  • Views: Visits to an entry’s detail page
  • Downloads: Access to the full text of a ZORA item, if available and accessible

View and download figures are available starting February 1, 2008. The data is updated continuously. There are two distinct periods:

  • February 1, 2008 – September 7, 2025: Access to ZORA EPrints; all data has been migrated to ZORA DSpace-CRIS.
  • September 8, 2025–: Access to ZORA DSpace-CRIS

Important Notes (“Disclaimer”)

  • Access statistics broken down by individual (authors, editors) are not available until further notice. This feature is no longer available in DSpace(-CRIS) starting with version 7.
  • Views and downloads are filtered whenever possible so that accesses from bots of well-known search engines are not counted. The bot lists for the periods specified above vary.
  • Access statistics may be significantly distorted, particularly from 2024 through mid-2026, because many bots no longer identify themselves in the user agent string as automated bots but rather as human-operated browsers. Particularly high access rates have been and continue to be caused by massive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, AI bots, and AI-assisted searches, which push ZORA to its performance limits. The ZORA statistics therefore no longer reflect actual usage.
    Since mid-2026, we have been using a web application firewall software that can distinguish between and filter traffic from DDoS attacks, AI bots, and AI-assisted searches, on the one hand, and traffic from humans and known bots, on the other. Based on our experience, 75–90% of network traffic to ZORA is machine-generated and can currently be filtered out by this software. We expect that, from that point on, the statistically recorded access figures will once again be more realistic. However, we anticipate that the “other side” will develop measures to circumvent this protection again in the medium term.