Carnevale Randy J, Aronsky Dominik
Department of Biomedical Informatics, Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Vanderbilt University, 2209 Garland Avenue, Nashville, TN 37232-8340, USA.
Int J Med Inform. 2007 Apr;76(4):269-73. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2005.12.001. Epub 2006 Feb 7.
To determine the decay rate of Uniform Record Locators (URLs) in the reference section of biomedical informatics journals.
URL references were collected from printed journal articles of the first and middle issues of 1999-2004 and electronically available in-press articles in January 2005. We limited this set to five biomedical informatics journals: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, International Journal of Medical Informatics, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: JAMIA, Methods of Information in Medicine, and Journal of Biomedical Informatics. During a 1-month period, URL access attempts were performed eight times a day at regular intervals.
Of the 19,108 references extracted from 606 printed and 86 in-press articles, 1112 (5.8%) references contained a URL. Of the 1049 unique URLs, 726 (69.2%) were alive, 230 (21.9%) were dead, and 93 (8.9%) were comatose. URLs from in-press articles included 212 URLs, of which 169 (79.7%) were alive, 21 (9.9%) were dead, and 22 (10.4%) were comatose. The average annual decay, or link rot, rate was 5.4%.
The URL decay rate in biomedical informatics journals is high. A commonly accepted strategy for the permanent archival of digital information referenced in scholarly publications is urgently needed.
确定生物医学信息学期刊参考文献部分统一资源定位符（URL）的衰减率。
从1999 - 2004年第一期和中期印刷版期刊文章以及2005年1月电子可获取的印刷中文章中收集URL参考文献。我们将范围限定在五本生物医学信息学期刊：《医学人工智能》《国际医学信息学杂志》《美国医学信息学协会杂志：JAMIA》《医学信息方法》和《生物医学信息学杂志》。在为期1个月的时间里，每天定期进行8次URL访问尝试。
从606篇印刷文章和86篇印刷中文章中提取的19108条参考文献中，1112条（5.8%）参考文献包含URL。在1049个唯一URL中，726个（69.2%）可用，230个（21.9%）不可用，93个（8.9%）处于休眠状态。印刷中文章的URL包括212个，其中169个（79.7%）可用，21个（9.9%）不可用，22个（10.4%）处于休眠状态。平均年衰减率，即链接失效率为5.4%。
生物医学信息学期刊中的URL衰减率很高。迫切需要一种被广泛接受的策略来对学术出版物中引用的数字信息进行永久存档。
