John Whitfield, Web links leave abstracts going nowhere, Nature 428, 592 (08 April 2004). (Access restricted to subscribers) Nature reports on recent studies documenting the impermanence of cited web resources. Jonathan Wren of Oklahoma showed that one-fifth of the web sites noted in Medline abstracts over a ten-year period had vanished. Robert Dellavalle's study of broken links in NEJM, JAMA and Science from 2003 is also mentioned (see earlier OAN posting,) with the author remarking: "Journals aren't doing anything to address the potential for electronic resources to disappear. ... It's amazing what doesn't exist — one of my own articles on digital preservation isn't there any more!" Further, the article quotes arXiv's Paul Ginsparg, who maintains that external links in papers posted on the site are discouraged. Solutions are considered, including author's archiving web resources to which they link, perhaps through the Internet Archive. CrossRef is also suggested as a way to stabilize URLs.
Posted by
Garrett at 4/07/2004 04:37:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
