written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-09-08
Reading up on Bayesian methods for analysis of high throughput measurement data, I saw this very promising paper by Johnson & Li.
In the abstract, there was a link. It looked awesome! There's software that accompanies this paper - I'm going to be able to try it out!
I entered the URL into Chrome, and got a DNS error. The link was not active. Bummer.
Scientists, it's time to archive your software properly. Put it on a digital repository that has a higher probability of being maintained long-term, and not on individual lab websites. Link rot is an issue that we have to deal with in the scientific literature.
(Granted, Johnson & Li published this in 2007, in which the issue of storing data and software on repositories was not widely recognized. I think the reader should be forgiving in this case.)
There's a ton of places we can put our work:
I did it with my own papers, and I'm encouraging my colleagues to do so as well. I'd encourage you to do so too.
@article{
ericmjl-2016-scientists-eliminate-link-rot,
author = {Eric J. Ma},
title = {Scientists: Eliminate Link Rot!},
year = {2016},
month = {09},
day = {08},
howpublished = {\url{https://ericmjl.github.io}},
journal = {Eric J. Ma's Blog},
url = {https://ericmjl.github.io/blog/2016/9/8/scientists-eliminate-link-rot},
}
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