Prototypes of pro-active approaches to support the archiving of web references for scholarly communications

Prototypes of pro-active approaches to support the
archiving of web references for scholarly
communications
Richard Wincewicz1, Peter Burnhill1
& Herbert Van de Sompel2
1EDINA, University of Edinburgh, 2Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Project Team
2013 – 2015, funded by the
Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation
• Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Research Library: Herbert Van de Sompel
Harihar Shankar, [Martin Klein, Rob Sanderson]
• University of Edinburgh:
Language Technology Group: Claire Grover,
Beatrice Alex, Colin Matheson, Richard Tobin, [Ke “Adam” Zhou]
EDINA * : Peter Burnhill, Muriel Mewissen (Project Manager),
Tim Stickland, Richard Wincewicz, [Neil Mayo]
Centre for Service Delivery & Digital Expertise

Overview
1. Introduction
2. Evidence
3. Remedy

Reference Rot
Links to Web at Large resources are subject to
Reference Rot. This is a combination of two factors:
• Link Rot: Link stops working
• e.g. HTTP 404 “Not Found”
• Content Drift: Linked content changes over time
• Possibly to the extent that it is no longer
representative of the content that was initially
referenced

Articles that Link to Articles & to Web At Large Resources
(PMC)
Martin Klein et al. (2014) Scholarly context not found
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115253

Articles that Link to Articles & to Web At Large Resources
(Elsevier)

Articles with URI References (PMC)
Articles 479,194
with URI references 399,005
with URI references to articles 240,857
with URI references to Web at Large 156,160

Link Rot (PMC)

Link Rot (Elsevier)

Links from arXiv, Elsevier, PMC to TLD Targets
Martin Klein et al. (2014) Scholarly context not found. In: PLOS ONE

Grey is Link Rot – Referenced Content Not Accessible

Grey is Not Archived - Referenced Content Lost

Content Drift – http://dl00.org
2000 2004
2005 2008
(a) Dynamic content
values on webpage change
over time
(b) Static content
but very different (often
unrelated) web pages

Create Snapshots of Referenced Resources
Various web archives support on-demand creation of
snapshots of URIs (manual, API):
 archive.today
 Internet Archive
 perma.cc
 webcitation.org
When creating snapshots, maintain:
 Original URI
 Snapshot URI
 Date/Time of snapshot

Create Snapshots of Referenced Resources
Snapshots can be created at various stages. The closer to
the moment of referencing, the better the image captured.
Stage Actor Snapshot Quality
Preparation Author/reference tool best
Submission
/Issue
Editor/manuscript
system
good
Publication
Aggregator/
publisher platform
ok
Post-publication
Librarian/IR,
journal archive
better than nothing

Authoring - Zotero Plugin Demonstrator
Richard Wincewicz (2014) Prototype Hiberlink plugin for Zotero for pro-active
archiving and temporal references
https://www.youtube.com/v/ZYmi_Ydr65M%26vq

Publication - HiberActive Service Demonstrator
Martin Klein et al. (2014) HiberActive: Pro-Active Archiving of web references from scholarly
articles
Open Repositories 2014 http://www.slideshare.net/martinklein0815/hiberactive

Reference Resources Robustly
When referencing resources include:
 Original URI – Allows the user to revisit the URI as it
is at the time of reading, if the URI is still operational
 Snapshot URI – Allows the user to visit the snapshot,
if one was created, and if the web archive in which it
was created is still operational
 Date/Time – with the original URI allow the user to
visit any snapshot created around the Date/Time in
any web archive around the world (using Memento
infrastructure)
(2015) Robust Links - Motivation
http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/about/

Reference Resources Actionably
When referencing resources, use Link Decorations to convey
Original URI, Snapshot URI, Date/Time
<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu”
data-originalurl=“http://archive.is/FAy6o”
data-versiondate=“2014-08-15” >
<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu”
Herbert Van de Sompel et al. (2015) Robust Links - Link Decorations
http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/spec/
<a href=“http://archive.is/FAy6o”
data-versionurl=“http://www.stanford.edu”

Robust Links Using Link Decorations, JavaScript,
Memento API
Demo - http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/demo/uri_references_js.html
robustlinks.js - https://github.com/mementoweb/robustlinks

Activate Robust Links
There are no Link Decorations, currently. But there is an
article publication date:
 Express the article publication date in an actionable
manner (‘datePublished’ or ‘dateModified’
Schema.org properties) in HTML pages that contain
URI references
 Tailor robustlinks.js to exclude links to articles
 Inject robustlinks.js in HTML pages that contain URI
references

Users Follow Robust Links into Web
Archives
The combination of the referenced URI and the article
publication date:
 Leads users to a snapshot in a web archive, created
as close as possible to the article publication date
 Addresses link rot
 Addresses content drift

Create Archive Copies
When ingesting new content into the platform:
 Parse for URI references
 Create snapshots in web archives of select URIs
 For these URIs, use Link Decorations in HTML to
convey:
• original URI
• snapshot URI
• snapshot Date/Time

Users Follow Robust Links into Web
Archives
The Link Decorations:
 Lead users to the created snapshot, if the web
archive is operational
 Lead users to a snapshot in any web archive, created
as close as possible to the snapshot Date/Time
 Addresses link rot
 Addresses content drift

Prototypes of pro-active approaches to support the
archiving of web references for scholarly
communications
Richard Wincewicz1, Peter Burnhill1
& Herbert Van de Sompel2
1EDINA, University of Edinburgh, 2Los Alamos National Laboratory
http://hiberlink.org #hiberlink

Prototypes of pro-active approaches to support the archiving of web references for scholarly communications

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