Corrosion of URLs: Implications for electronic publishing

摘要

The aim of this study is to analyze the accessibility, corrosion and half-life of URLs cited in the articles of Indian LIS conference proceedings published during 2001 to 2010. A total of 5,698 URLs cited in the 1,700 articles were examined. The percentage of URLs increased from 39.10 percent in 2001 to 73.47 percent in 2009. The study found that 50.09 percent of URLs were not accessible at the time of testing and the remaining 49.91 percent of URLs were accessible. The HTTP 404 error message – "file not found" was the overwhelming message encountered and represented 53.29 percent of all HTTP messages. The study also noticed that the average half-life of URLs of missing URLs was estimated to be 4.94 years. Even though there are various retrieval tools being used to recover vanished URLs, still there is a need to improve such tools.