Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 09:05:47 -0800 (PST)
From: J. K. Vijayakumar
http://www.webcitation.org/index
Background
Authors increasingly cite webpages in medical and scientific publications,
which can "disappear" overnight. The problem of unstable webcitations has
recently been recently referred to as an issue "calling for an immediate
response" by publishers and authors.
What is WebCiteR?
WebCiteR is an archiving system for webreferences (cited webpages and
websites), which can be used by authors, editors, and publishers of
scholarly papers and books, to ensure that cited webmaterial will remain
available to readers in the future. If cited webreferences in journal
articles, books etc. are not archived, future readers may encounter a "404
File Not Found" error when clicking on a cited URL.
A WebCiteR reference is an archived webcitation, and rather than linking to
the live website (which can and probably will disappear in the future),
authors of scholarly works will link to the archived WebCiteR copy on
webcitation.org.
How do I use WebCiteR as an author to archive webpages I want to cite?
WebCiteR is an entirely free service for authors who want to cite
webmaterial, regardless of what publication they are writing for (even if
the journal/publisher authors are writing for are not yet listed as members.
Membership only means some sort of formal agreement with a publisher). We
ask, however, to use WebCiteR primarily in the context of scholarly
publications.
The author of a citing manuscript can:
* Either manually initiate the archiving of a single cited webpage (by
using either the WebCite bookmarklet or the archive page) and manually
insert a citation to the permanently archived webdocument on webcitation.org
in his manuscript, or;
* Upload an entire citing manuscript to the WebCite server via the comb
page, which initiates the WebCiteR tool to comb through the manuscript and
to archive all cited non-journal URLs. The WebCiteR software also replaces
all URLs in the manuscript with a link to the permanently archived
webdocument on webcitation.org.
How can I use WebCiteR as an editor?
If you are a journal editor, publisher, or copyeditor, the first thing you
should do is to insert a note in your "Instructions for authors" asking your
authors to use webcitation.org to permanently archive all cited webpages and
websites, and to cite the archived copy rather than the original link, which
may be "dead" in a few weeks, months, or years.
Secondly, editors/copyeditors should initiate the archiving of cited
webpages (see instructions above "How to use WebCiteR as an author") and
replace all webcitations in a manuscript with links to the archived copy,
before the manuscript is published.
Thirdly, please notify us that you are using WebCiteR -- you will become a
member of the WebCiteR consortium (which is free) by filling in the form.
How can I use WebCiteR as a publisher?
Contact us to become a partner in the WebCiteR consortium by filling in the
form.
Ask your editors to instruct their authors and copyeditors to cache all
cited URLs "prospectively" before submission or at least during the
copyediting process. Talk to us if you would like to submit XML files (for
us to archive cited webpages automatically), or if you would like to have
back-issues of your journal(s) analyzed for webcitations and the cited
documents "retrospectively" archived.
Except for archived content, this site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Mark Perkins MLIS, MCLIP
www.markperkins.info
