Going, Going, Gone: Lost Internet References

In a study appearing in Science (Oct 31 2003: 787-788) titled 'Going, Going, Gone: Lost Internet References,' researchers found that very important scientific information is sometimes hard to find on the Internet. References, the information used by authors to support arguments in journal articles, are increasingly pointing to information on the Internet, and these Internet references are often lost within months, according to a study performed at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Internet references accounted for 2.6 percent of all references in a sample of more than 1000 articles published between 2000 and 2003 in three journals: The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association and Science. In articles up to only 27 months old, 13 percent of Internet references were inactive, making substantial amounts of information unavailable.

http://www.uchsc.edu/news/newsrelease/2003/1030-InternetRef.shtml

Posted by Tom on November 13, 2003