URLs Link Rot:Implications for Electronic Publishing

In recent years the authors of scholarly publications have relied on e-resources. But e-resources have raised the question of permanency on the web. In this context, this article investigates the availability, persistence of Uniform Resource Locator (URL) citations cited in two Library and Information Science (LIS) journal articles published by Emerald Publishers during 2008 and 2012. In total, 2477 URLs cited in 406 research articles published in two LIS journals spanning a period of five years (2008-2012) were extracted. The study found that 23.81 per cent (2,477 out of 10,400 references) of URLs were cited in these journal articles. 49.53 per cent of URL citations were not accessible and the remaining 51.47 per cent of URL citations were still accessible. The study used W3C link checker to identify HTTP errors associated with missing URLs. HTTP 500 error message-'page not found' was the overwhelming message that represented 39.18 per cent of all HTTP error messages. This study attempts to focus on URLs link rot and its implications for electronic publishing.