The phenomenon of lapsed URLs, otherwise known as “linkrot,” has been acknowledged since the 1990s; however, a relative few studies addressed the impact of linkrot with respect to the footnote, the foundation upon which the scientific documentation is based. In this summary of research to date, the authors focus on three top journals in journalism and communication-Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly-testing some 416 online citations over four years. Of the total 416 citations, only 61% were still accessible. Additionally, 19% of the online footnotes contained an error in the URL, and 63% did not provide an access date in the published citation. Of those links that were still active, only 58% matched the cited content. The authors also introduce their concept of “the half-life of Internet footnotes,” or the time is takes for one-half of online citations in a journal to go dead, and make recommendations to extend the online life of Internet-based footnotes.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/29/2005 09:12:00 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.
