Verifiability of internet citations in clinical medicine journals in China -- An analysis of accessibility

This research studied the accessibility issues of Internet source citation in Clinical Medicine in China, by examining 23 prestige Chinese journals published between 2000 and 2014. A total of 7,058 Internet citations were analyzed according to their URLs structure. Our results show that (1) clinical medicine articles in Chinese journals exhibited an increasing trend of citing Internet sources; (2) the percentages of inaccessible URLs significantly increased along with the increasing time since published; and (3) the citations with URLs from commercial websites, government websites and the static web pages were highly accessible. Because the inaccessible citations would decrease the reproduction of academic findings, and increase the risk in clinical practice, we suggest medical publishers, librarians and web resource providers ensure the accessibility of such citations