Eric J Ma's Website

Scientists: Eliminate Link Rot!

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.


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