Webcite links provide access to archived copy of linked web pages

This lack of permanence of web links (sometimes known as link rot) is a general phenomenon across the web, but it is a particularly problem in the case of published scientific research. On the one hand, the coherence of the published scientific record depends on being able to refer back to the articles including the online material that they refer to. But on the other hand, the character of scientific research projects (which tend to be funded for a few years at a time) and of scientific careers (which tend to involved frequent shifts between institutions) mean that scientific web pages become inaccessible with worrying regularity.

In this electronic age, it is not realistic to expect authors to refrain entirely from mentioning web pages in their articles, ephemeral as they may be. So, since late 2005, BioMed Central has been working in partnership with the WebCite initiative, based at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at Toronto General Hospital, to preserve archival copies of all web pages linked to from BioMed Central articles.

Wherever you see a logo, whether in the body of an article, or in the reference section, you can click on that link to view a version of that page that has been archived at WebCite.

Source: OpenAccessCentral

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 and is filed under Archives and Special Collections, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.