In the open science ecosystem of 2026, the publication of a digital object—be it a working paper or a technical protocol—no longer represents a mere act of communication between human peers. Instead, it constitutes a data injection into a hybrid nervous system. By analyzing the trajectory of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) within open repositories like Zenodo versus closed indices such as Web of Science (WoS), a clear hierarchy of validation emerges. In this landscape, operational impact is measured by a document's capacity to be "metabolised" by both biological and artificial agents. Zenodo functions as a data sanctuary under the aegis of CERN. Its primary mandate is not editorial curation but preservational accessibility. Within this space, traffic metrics reveal a starkly asymmetrical reality: Synthetic Ingestion currently accounts for 88% to 92% of total engagement. This volume is composed of large language model (LLM) crawlers and automated aggregators that index abstracts in milliseconds.
A "standard" paper—one lacking a pre-established dissemination network—typically records an average of 50 to 150 views within its first 24 hours, subsequently stabilizing into a "long tail" of purely mechanical traffic. When a series, such as Socioplastics, achieves figures exceeding 400 views in its opening days, we are not witnessing a phenomenon of mass human reading, but rather an activation of metadata. High-density keywords act as beacons that attract AI training nodes, integrating the content into the global "body of knowledge" before the first human user has even initiated a PDF download.
While Zenodo provides immediate visibility, Google Scholar serves as the universal radar. Approximately 70% of DOI-enabled documents on Zenodo are detected by Scholar within a 15-day cycle. This index filters out basic bot noise to focus exclusively on citability. At this stage, success shifts from the "view" (digital friction) to the "citation" (an ontological bond). In direct contrast stands Web of Science (WoS). If Zenodo is the public square, WoS is the gated community. This index recognizes only the 5% to 10% of global scientific output, relying on a peer-review system that functions as a filter for human institutional exclusion. Within WoS, bot traffic is rendered irrelevant; the priority is the Impact Factor, a metric that ignores the velocity of ingestion in favour of institutional stability and prestige. The statistical reality of a contemporary paper is that its Organic Audience (the human core) rarely exceeds 10% to 12% of total traffic. However, this percentage is not a mark of failure but the residue of high-fidelity interaction. The remaining 90% of "machine views" constitutes the requisite price of digital existence. To publish in 2026 is, in essence, to program the future of algorithmic reasoning. The value of a protocol resides not in how many human eyes scan it, but in how its semantic density and nominal sovereignty compel the technical infrastructure to register its presence. In this scenario, success is not defined by popularity, but by indexed permanence.
