>> One of the other things I've come to realise is that although it is >> nice to be able to access material that is referenced, the reference >> primarily recognises the work of others, and puts your work into >> context - access is only a secondary concern. It is perfectly >> possible and OK to reference material that is not generally >> available, as a reader I may not have access to certain material, >> and over time material is destroyed so when referencing rare or >> unique texts it may become absolutely impossible to access the >> referenced source. >> >> I think for research publications there is a genuine and growing >> issue - especially when we start to consider the practice of >> referencing datasets which is just starting to become common >> practice in scientific research. If the dataset grows over time, >> will it be possible to see the version of the dataset used when >> doing a specific piece of research? > > You might find the WebCite service [1] to be of some use. Of course it > cannot work retroactively, so it is best if researchers use it > in the first place. ... or maybe not. Seems WebCite is unreliable in several ways. Here is a copy of a message that I sent them in July. No reply. A real shame, as their service or something like it is badly needed. -- Dear WebCitation.org, First of all, if this is sent to the wrong address, will you please forward it for me? For reasons that will become clear below, [log in to unmask] is the only email address I could find on your web-site, so that is where I am sending this message. I want to start by saying how very necessary a service like WebCite is, and how much I want WebCitation.org to be it. As a publishing scientist who also writes a lot of substantial blog posts, I need to be able to cite my own and others' web pages in formal publications, and a deposit-a-snapshot service is a big step towards making that possible in many more journals. For that reason, my colleagues and I have written favourably about WebCite, here (http://svpow.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/blogs-papers-and-the-brave-new-digital-world-matts-thoughts/) and more so here (http://svpow.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/blogs-papers-etc-some-more-random-thoughts-from-mike-this-time/). Back at the start of July I was putting the finishing touches to a manuscript on the inevitability that electronically published works will be recognised as valid for the purposes of zoological nomenclature -- something that is explicitly ruled out by the current draft of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. My manuscript quotes and otherwise cites seven web pages, so before submitting it to the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature, I went to deposit snapshots of those pages -- only to find that the service was down (see first attachment). I found that rather disturbing, as an archive that comes and goes can hardly be considered permanent; these worries were amplified by the wholly uninformative message "Webcitation.org is undergoing maintenance and will be back shortly". No hint of how long the outage would last: minutes, hours, days? Days, as it happens, but I waited, and on July 9 I archived the seven pages. They were: http://palaeo-electronica.org/iczn.htm http://www.webcitation.org/5i9L7Heuu http://chinleana.blogspot.com/2009/05/here-we-go-again-darwinius-iczn-and.html http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LKuYTC http://svpow.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/blogs-papers-etc-some-more-random-thoughts-from-mike-this-time/ http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LQWsoo http://svpow.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/blogs-papers-and-the-brave-new-digital-world-matts-thoughts/ http://www.webcitation.org/5i9Lacleu http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/05/20/does-darwinius-exist/ http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LkvRwz http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/05/21/does-darwinius-exist-revisited-the-official-word-isnot-yet/ http://www.webcitation.org/5i9Lto7tj http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/05/21/darwinius-named-at-last/ http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LwV6rs I verified that the new archive URLs worked: they did. I submitted the manuscript on July 10, handled reviewers' comments, had it accepted, and today was sent the proof PDF for final checking. I am cautious enough that I re-tested the archive URLs, and found to my astonishment and dismay that all seven failed to work. I checked that the URLs in the proof PDF matched those in the submitted manuscript; they did. What has happened to them? The extraordinary thing is that, as it turns out, the archived pages have not simply been discarded: they have been moved to new URLs! I discovered this by searching at webcitation.org for the URLs of the original pages, and found that they have changed as follows: OLD NEW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.webcitation.org/5i9L7Heuu http://www.webcitation.org/5i9L7Helc http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LKuYTC http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LKuXhY http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LQWsoo http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LQWszo http://www.webcitation.org/5i9Lacleu http://www.webcitation.org/5hSmMI5k0 http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LkvRwz http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LkvRhY http://www.webcitation.org/5i9Lto7tj http://www.webcitation.org/5i9Lto7Dk http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LwV6rs http://www.webcitation.org/5i9LwV71E The pattern makes no sense to me: in some of these URLs (e.g. the first) only the last two characters have changed. Yet in the fourth, all but the very first character of the key has changed. How can this have happened? And why? And is there any reason to think it won't happen again? My instinct was simply to give up on WebCite and instruct the BZN to remove all the WebCite URLs from the paper, but my colleague Matt Wedel (copied on this email) persuaded me that I should instead try to get the problem fixed. So I went to WebCitation.org and clicked the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page, only to find that the Contact page is itself broken (see second attachment). As with the first site failure, the error message is not particularly helpful: "Your request returned the following error: Invalid snapshot ID contact requested". This is the reason that I am sending my message to you, the owner of the only email address on the site. Despite everything, I really want to use WebCite in the references for this paper if I can. As I said at the beginning, this kind of service is important and increasingly necessary; I am keen, if I can, to increase its exposure by using it in an internationally distributed and widely read journal. Is there a way I can do so? What I can not do is request the BZN to change the "permanent links" from the old to new versions -- it should be clear that this would constitute an admission that the archiving scheme is broken, which in turn would undermine the very arguments I make in the paper regarding the persistence of electronic resources. Instead, I must ask you, if you possibly can, to reinstate the old URLs -- http://www.webcitation.org/5i9L7Heuu, etc. If you're able to do this within 24 hours, then I can return the proof to BZN without requiring changes to the references. Unfortunately, the journal's printing deadlines mean that I can not delay the return of the proofs for long, so if this isn't possible within the stated time, I think I will have no option but to request the removal of the WebCite links -- something we're all keen to avoid. Do please let me know the upshot of this as soon as you're able. I appreciate that you're busy -- as I am -- but deadlines imposed elsewhere constrain us. Thanks for your attention, Mike Taylor.