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Prospective evaluation of the accessibility of Internet references in leading general medical journals

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Abstract

This study prospectively evaluates the accessibility of Internet references in leading general medical journals and explores the impact of their lost accessibility. We identified all original contributions published in five leading peer-reviewed traditional general medical journals and one leading on-line journal that were published at two time points (January 2005 and January 2008). We followed the sample prospectively for 5 years and determined the number of Internet references that remained accessible. Our sample of 165 original contributions contained 154 Internet references. Accessibility to Internet references declined from 51 % after 4 years to 37 % after 8 years in the articles published in January 2005, and decreased from 78 % after 1 year to 44 % after 5 years in the articles published in January 2008. Among those Internet references published in the most highly-cited articles, only 19 % (95 % CI 10–35 %) remained accessible in March 2013. Among the Internet references cited in the Methods section of the articles, only 30 % (95 % CI 20–43 %) remained accessible. Of the 91 Internet references which were no longer accessible at the end of the follow-up period, 39 (43 %) were assigned a rating of either ‘important’ or ‘very important’. Accessibility of Internet references declines substantially over time most often because the information is updated or the sites become unavailable. Accessibility remains poor even among those Internet references that are most important.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Peter Anderson for technical assistance. This manuscript was presented at the plenary session on post publication access, dissemination, and exchange at the Seventh International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication in September 2013.

Conflict of interest

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Women’s College Research Institute, Women’s College Hospital, 790 Bay Street Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Paula A. Rochon & Wei Wu

  2. Departments of Medicine and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Paula A. Rochon

  3. Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Paula A. Rochon & Sudeep S. Gill

  4. Division of Geriatric Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Jerry H. Gurwitz

  5. SRK Informatics, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Sunila R. Kalkar

  6. Pixelligent, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Joel Thomson

  7. St. Mary’s of the Lake Hospital, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Sudeep S. Gill

  8. Department of Medicine, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Sudeep S. Gill

Authors
  1. Paula A. Rochon
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  2. Wei Wu
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  3. Jerry H. Gurwitz
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  4. Sunila R. Kalkar
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  5. Joel Thomson
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  6. Sudeep S. Gill
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paula A. Rochon.

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Rochon, P.A., Wu, W., Gurwitz, J.H. et al. Prospective evaluation of the accessibility of Internet references in leading general medical journals. Scientometrics 102, 1375–1384 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1489-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1489-y

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