A large and growing number of the references in scholarly articles are links to online information. This is great news if the link works and you can access the article with a single click instead of going to the library.

The problem

However, according to a study published in the journal Science, 13% of Internet references in scholarly articles were inactive after only 27 months.

Another problem is that the cited web pages often change. Consequently the readers see something different than what the citing author saw.

A solution

WebCite is a free archiving system for any kind of web references (web pages, websites, PDFs, images, videos, MP3s etc). Authors, editors, and publishers of scholarly papers and books an use WebCite to ensure that web based material remains available.

WebCite works much like an online bookmarking tool: There is a bookmarklet which you click when on the page you wish to cite.

You proceed to fill in a form and WebCite provides you with an enhanced reference which contains the original live URL and a link to an archived copy of the material, exactly as the citing author saw it when he accessed the cited material.

More than 100 journals are members of the WebCite Consortium and use WebCite on a routine basis. However, for individual scholars who want to cite and archive no formal membership or even registration is required.

photo credit: P/UL