Download This PaperPerma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations
24 Pages Posted: 23 Sep 2013 Last revised: 15 Feb 2014
Date Written: October 1, 2013
Abstract
We document a serious problem of reference rot: more than 70% of the URLs within the Harvard Law Review and other journals, and 50% of the URLs found within United States Supreme Court opinions, do not link to the originally cited information.
Given that, we propose a solution for authors and editors of new scholarship that involves libraries undertaking the distributed, long-term preservation of link contents.
Keywords: URLs, Internet, Link Rot, Reference Rot, Archiving Preservation
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Zittrain, Jonathan and Albert, Kendra and Lessig, Lawrence, Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations (October 1, 2013). Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 13-42, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2329161 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2329161
Jonathan Zittrain (Contact Author)
Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government ( email )
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
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