Content Rot I asked a research assistant to follow links in papers published in April of 2005 and April 2010 across four journals, to get a sense of what happens to links 5 and 10 years out. [2<\/a>]\n Perusing results I noticed that:<\/p>\n If you intend to give future readers access to the information you are accessing today, providing links seems like a terrible way to do that.<\/p>\n Solution Here is an example. The Cincinnati Post<\/em> was a newspaper that started in 1881 and shut down in 2007. The newspaper had a website (www.cincypost.com<\/a>). If you visit it today, your browser will show this:<\/p>\n The browser will show the same result if we follow any link to any story ever published by that newspaper.<\/p>\n Using the WebArchive, however, we can still read the subset of stories that were archived, for example, this October 2007 story on a fundraising event by then president George W. Bush (.html<\/a>)<\/p>\n How to make your<\/em> links \u201cpermanent\u201d Copy paste the resulting permanent link onto your paper<\/p>\n Example You could include that link in your paper, but eventually DataColada will die, and so will the content you are linking to. Someone reading your peer-reviewed\u00a0Colada takedown\u00a0in ninety years will have no way of knowing what you were talking about. But, if you copy-paste that URL into the WebArchive, you will save the post, and get a permanent link like this:<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>It is estimated that about 20%-30% of links referenced in papers are already dead and, like you and me, the remaining links aren\u2019t getting any younger. [1<\/a>]\n![\"Figure1\"](\"https:\/\/datacolada.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Figure11.png\")
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\n<\/strong>Making links \u201cpermanent\u201d is actually easy. It involves saving the referenced material on WebArchive.org<\/em>, a repository that saves individual internet pages \u201cforever.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"dead\"](\"https:\/\/datacolada.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/dead.png\")
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\n<\/strong>1) Go to http:\/\/archive.org\/web
\n<\/a>2) Enter the URL of interest into the \u201cSave Page Now\u201d box<\/p>\n![\"webarchive](\"https:\/\/datacolada.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/webarchive-image.jpg\")
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\n<\/strong>Imagine writing an academic article in which you want to cite, say, Colada[33] \u201cThe Effect Size Does not Exist\u201d.\u00a0The URL is https:\/\/datacolada.org\/2015\/02\/09\/33-the-effect-size-does-not-exist\/<\/a><\/p>\n
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