The Life and Death of URLs: The Case of \u3ci\u3eJournal of the Medical Library Association\u3c/i\u3e

This research aims to examine URL decay of articles published in Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA). To do this, at first, we extracted all issues of JMLA from 2002 to 2008 and calculated number of all Web citations (URLs). Afterwards, we checked decay or availability of individual cited URLs. Results of these tests were then compiled and analyzed to examine reasons for failure as well as to obtain the half-life value of Web citations in JMLA. The study revealed that 76% of articles have Web citations and each article on average uses 5 URLs. From 1049 cited URLs, 31% had error messages. Most of errors were related to message 404 Not Found . Also, the average half-life for cited Internet resources is estimated to be 7 years