Scott Carlson, Scholars Note 'Decay' of Citations to Online References, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 14, 2005 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'An analysis of citations to Web addresses in scholarly articles on communications studies found that a third of the links were no longer active. The two scholars who conducted the analysis are preparing their findings for publication and coming up with a list of recommendations to stop what they refer to as the decay of online citations....Steve Jones, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago who is an editor of New Media & Society, called the decay of online citations "a real issue" that the journal has begun to examine. He wonders whether copyright law might someday allow scholars to copy and archive online articles that they used as sources. But he says such a solution is "pie in the sky." Anthony T. Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University who has written a book about footnotes, has read a draft of the Iowa State professors' study and agrees that citation decay is "a real problem....I'm looking at a world in which documentation and verification melt into air," he says.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/14/2005 07:50:00 AM.
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.
