Bioinformatics Advance Access published online on April 15, 2008
Bioinformatics, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn127
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URL decay in MEDLINE – a 4-year follow-up study
Arthritis and Immunology Research Program, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation; 825 N.E. 13th Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73104-5005.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Dr. Jonathan Wren, E-mail: Jonathan-Wren{at}OMRF.org
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Abstract |
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Motivation: Internet-based electronic resources, as given by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), are being increasingly used in scientific publications but are also becoming inaccessible in a time-dependant manner, a phenomenon documented across disciplines. Initial reports brought attention to the problem, spawning methods of effectively preserving URL content while some journals adopted policies regarding URL publication and begun storing supplementary information on journal websites. Thus, a re-examination of URL growth and decay in the literature is merited to see if the problem has grown or been mitigated by any of these changes
Results: After the 2003 study, three follow-up studies were conducted in 2004, 2005 and 2007. Unfortunately, no significant change was found in the rate of URL decay among any of the studies. However, only 5% of URLs cited more than twice have decayed versus 20% of URLs cited once or twice. The most common types of lost content were computer programs (43%), followed by scholarly content (38%) and databases (19%). Compared to URLs still available, no lost content type was significantly over or under-represented. Searching for 30 of these websites using Google, 11 (37%) were found relocated to different URLs.
Conclusions: URL decay continues unabated, but URLs published by organizations tend to be more stable. Repeated citation of URLs suggests calculation of an electronic impact factor (eIF) would be an objective, quantitative way to measure the impact of Internet-based resources on scientific research.
Contact: Jonathan-Wren{at}OMRF.org
Associate Editor: Prof. Alfonso Valencia
Received on January 22, 2008; revised on March 11, 2008; accepted on April 6, 2008
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