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

[Alex Halavais]

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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