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Web Pages Are Weak Links in the Chain of Knowledge
PizzaFace writes "Contributions to science, law, and other scholarly fields rely for their authority on citations to earlier publications. The ease of publishing on the web has made it an explosively popular medium, and web pages are increasingly cited as authorities in other publications. But easy come, easy go: web pages often get moved or removed, and publications that cite them lose their authorities. The Washington Post reports on the loss of knowledge in ephemeral web pages, which a medical researcher compares to the burning of ancient Alexandria's library. As the board chairman of the Internet Archive says, "The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture.""
There already is such an identifier. It's called a Universal Resource Identifier, or URI. See Berners-Lee essay Cool URIs Don't Change.
Hmmm. I'm not sure most scholary works are allowed to just cite arbitrary URLs for inline references or footnotes.
The idea is that you generally have to cite peer-reviewed, published and presented articles; criteria which the majority of web published material simply does not satisfy. Web reading would fall under the "course reading", and would have to be backed up by a "real" reference.
According to my GF (currently working on a Masters in Anthropology) there is a lot of confusion on how to use the web for scholary references. Many people cite URLs in citations that are really just online archives of previously-published work. In this case, noting the URL is like saying which library you checked the article out, and what shelf it was on. If you are an undergrad and cite a URL, it is almost a sure thing that the prof or the TA's will take marks off for improper citations.
There are a few peer-reviewed journals that are (partly or completely) published online, in which case the URL might be a valid citation. This is likely to changed, and it seems the original article was suggesting that we need to handle this case now, before we lose more good work.
In a much smaller way, this is the kind of thing that those involved in the whole blog phenomenon are trying to resolve; making sure that their blog-rolls, trackbacks and search-engine cached pages stay historically maintainable.
-- clvrmnky
Law journals have tried to tried to cope with the proper weight of authority to grant web pages by trying to follow the Blue Book, a citation manual.
The general rule has been that whenever you can find something in print, cite to that, but add an internet cite when either it is available and would make it easier to find, or if it is only available online.
Things that are only available online are surprisingly common in citation. The leading court reporter services (WestLaw and Lexis Nexis) both have cases that aren't "officially" printed, but are available online.
Also, many journal articles will cite to web pages such as a company's official description or press releases.
In general, these citations are treated for their functional purpose and not their form of media -- online cases are grouped (last) with other cases, and information from most web site is considered a pamphlet or other unofficial publication.
This system seems to deal with the fact that they are ephemera pretty well. The citations really are only used to make a point that is merely illustrative or is easily accessible to legal practitioners.