…Our study examined the frequency, format, and activity of Internet references in 3 high-circulation US journals with scientific impact in the top 1% of all journals as rated by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Journal Citation Reports (Science Edition of 2001)
…Internet Reference Activity: The percentage of inactive Internet references increased from 3.8% at 3 months to 10% at 15 months and to 13% at 27 months after publication (13) (Figure S1). For articles 27 months old, JAMA had the greatest Internet reference inactivity (21%) compared with NEJM (13%) and Science (11%).
Inactive Internet references were most commonly .com addresses (46% lost after 27 months) followed by .edu (30%), other (20%), .gov (10%) and .org (5%) (see Table 1). Book reviews had the greatest loss (17%) and opinion and news articles, the least (8%) (13) (Table S1).
