[Air-L] Antw: Re: Inclusion of short links in academic publications?

live human.factor.one at gmail.com
Fri Jul 22 08:48:12 PDT 2011


This is the biggest reason. 
You want to be as close to original source as possible, and short urls are unarchivable.
Academic research and writing is meant to stand the test of time - otherwise, just go become a blogger. ;)

Sharon Greenfield
@SharonG


On Jul 22, 2011, at 8:34 AM, Alex Halavais wrote:

> The biggest disadvantage to shortlinks is that they are essentially
> unarchivable. When I go to an older journal article that has a URL,
> the chances are very good that the URL is dead, and if it isn't dead,
> that the content is no longer anything near the original. With the
> original URL and a date, I can at least give a shot at the Wayback
> Machine. It's unlikely that it's been captured, but far more likely
> than if it's via a shortener.
> 
> There have been both crowd-sourced and commercial efforts to "back up"
> the major shortening services (e.g.,
> http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=52&articleid=20090823_52_E5_SANFRA703633
> ), but that seems to be a Herculean/Sisyphean task (i.e., akin to
> digging up a lot of manure and trying to roll it up a hill.)
> 
> - Alex
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Joseph Reagle <joseph.2011 at reagle.org> wrote:
>> On Friday, July 22, 2011, Johann Hoechtl wrote:
>>> If you are the one who created the shortlinks, it's likely that you have the ability to track how many times it was clicked (if you register at the shortening service)
>> 
>> OK, understood.
>> 
>>> * If you happen to publish a paper in a (closed) journal you are able to interpolate a figure how often your submission was read (if there is a statistical figure how many paper readers actually follow references, footnotes or plain internet links). Did the reviewers took a deep look into your references? From that you can derive a, admittedly problematic, cost-value ratio of the journal.
>> 
>> Ah, I was thinking the primary thing I'd want to know was how many people read my paper but that's not something I'd have access to. But I can see your interpolation point though I'd be cognizant that (again) there are many services out there.
>> 
>> As to other reasons (usefulness of my sources, and countries and such), those haven't been too compelling to me, and I'll note that this might steal page rank link juice -- since references to things will now have multiples URLs.
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> 
> 
> 
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> // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur
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