PurposeThe aim of this paper is to scrutinize the accessibility and decay of web references (URLs) cited in five open access social sciences journals indexed by ISI.Design/methodology/approachAfter acquiring all the papers published by these journals during 2002‐2007, their web citations were extracted and analyzed from an accessibility point of view. Moreover, for initially missed citations complementary pathways such as using Internet Explorer and the Google search engine were employed.FindingsThe study revealed that at first check 73 per cent of URLs are accessible, while 27 per cent have disappeared. It is notable that the rate of accessibility increased to 89 per cent and the rate of decay decreased to 11 per cent after using complementary pathways. The “.net” domain, with an availability of 96 per cent (a decay of 4 per cent) has the greatest stability and persistence among all domains, while the most stable file format is PDF, with an availability of 93 per cent (a decay of 7 per cent).Originality/valueGiven the inevitable, destructive and progressing decay phenomenon in web citations, after estimating the extent of this decay for five journals using innovative and standard methods, this paper suggests recommendations for preventing it. The paper carries research value for web content providers, publishers, editors, authors and researchers.