Availability and decay of Internet references cited in open access journals indexed in ISI: A case study

The present research aims to examine the availability and decay of Internet references cited in five open access journals indexed in ISI. This is an applied research categorized in group of descriptive and quantitative studies. Its population is composed of 748 articles published from 2002 to late 2007 by these five journals. Afterwards, all Internet citations (URLs) were extracted and thus, 3734 URLs were identified. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and needed tables and diagrams were drawn by means of Excel software (version 2007). Research findings indicated that at first check, out of 3734 URLs, 73% were accessible while 27% disappeared. It is notable that rate of availability increased to 89% and rate of decay decreased to 11% after searching gone URLs through the Internet, Internet archive and Google. Domain. net with availability of 96% (decay, 4%) has more stability and persistence compared to other domains. And, the most stable file is PDF with availability of 93% (decay, 7%). Additionally, most of errors were related to message "404 not found" (43%), and the average half-life for cited Internet resources is estimated to be 8 years and 9 months. Finally, some suggestions and recommendations have been offered to stop decay phenomenon.