The Shadow Uniform Resource Locator: Standardizing Citations of Electronically Published Materials

Abstract

Citation of scientific materials published on the Internet is often cumbersome because of unwieldy uniform resource locators (URLs). The authors describe a format for URLs that simplifies citation of scholarly materials. Its use depends on a simple HTML device, the "refresh page." Uniform citation would follow this format: [Author I. Title of article. http:// domain/year/month-day(e#).html]. The HTML code for such a page is: (HTML) (head) (meta HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0; URL= http://Actual-URL/ for-article/ referred-to/ incitation.html") (/head) (/HTML). The code instructs the browser to suppress the content of the refresh page and bring up the title page of the cited article instead. Citations would be succinct and predictable. An electronic journal would not need to alter its existing file hierarchy but would need to establish a distinct domain name and maintain a file of refresh pages. Utilization of the "shadow" URL would bring us one step closer to truly universal resource locators.

Decay of References to Web sites in Articles Published in General Medical Journals: Mainstream vs Small Journals

“…This might be obvious, as the longer the URLs, the more likely that an error will occur in their handling. Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and WebCite ® links are usually less than 20 characters in length and are thus less likely to cause errors [24].…”

An update on Uniform Resource Locator (URL) decay in MEDLINE abstracts and measures for its mitigation

“…In general, URL decay occurs for several reasons: servers may shutdown because of business failures; URL content may change or reconfigured by the Web site owners; and errors in URL citing may occur. This is especially true for long URLs that can easily get truncated [ 4 ]. Several studies have tried to document the extent of URL decay in scientific literature.…”