WebCite is a system that archives webpages and other online content to allow them to be cited and remain accessible long-term. It addresses issues with URLs becoming inactive and web content changing over time. Authors can use WebCite to archive web references they cite. Publishers can implement WebCite to have references archived during the publication process. WebCite aims to make online content more citable and preserve it as part of the scholarly record. It has been adopted by over 200 journals and aims to work with libraries for long-term digital preservation.

1. Editor/Publisher, J Med Internet Res Associate Professor Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, & KMDI, University of Toronto; Senior Scientist , Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, Division of Medical Decision Making and Health Care Research; Toronto General Research Institute of the UHN, Toronto General Hospital, Canada Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH WebCite® (www.webcitation.org) WebCite® (www.webcitation.org)

2. WebCite® is an on-demand archiving system (controlled by citing and cited authors, editors, and publishers), which enables long-term digital preservation and citability of any kind of Internet-accessible object * Mission * webpages, blogs, wikis, data files e.g. spreadsheets, PDF-reports, “grey” research reports, preprints etc.

4. www.jmir.org

7. Problem 1: URLs go “dead”

9. Dellavalle RP, Hester EJ, Heilig LF, Drake AL, Kuntzman JW, Graber M, et al. Information science. Going, going, gone: lost Internet references. Science 2003 Oct 31;302(5646):787-788. DOI:10.1126/science.1088234 In one study published in the journal Science , 13% of Internet references in scholarly articles were inactive after only 27 months.

10. Problem 2: Even if URLs don’t go “dead”, their content may change

11. Eysenbach G. Towards quality management of medical information on the internet: evaluation, labelling, and filtering of information BMJ 1998;317:1496-1502

12. Today, that site looks different… medpics.org

13. Wikis and Blogs change constantly

14. The homepage of a blog shows the most recent posts only

15. Problem 3: Internet material not deemed “citable” (impedes the use of blogs, wikis, online-sharing of datasets etc.)

16. Editors often discourage citing web material (including datasets) URL:http://www.plantphysiol.org/misc/ifora.shtml. Accessed: 2008-06-26. (Archived by WebCite ® at http://www.webcitation.org/5YsaBISU5)

18. Problem 4: Crawler-based archiving insufficient

25. Two possible citation formats to cite the WebCite snapshot Eysenbach, Gunther. Gunther Eysenbach Random Research Rants Blog. 2008-06-26. URL:http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com. Accessed: 2008-06-26. (Archived by WebCite ® at http://www.webcitation.org/5YreMGRz7) Eysenbach, Gunther. Gunther Eysenbach Random Research Rants Blog. 2008-06-26. http:// www.webcitation.org/query?url =http%3A%2F%2Fgunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com&date=2008-06-26 Opaque (ID-based) Transparent (Note that there are also others: Hash-based, and citing-document-DOI-based)

27. Bookmarklet Can be used to rapidly archive the currently viewed webpage (bookmarklet hands over current URL and email adress of the citing author to the WebCite server)

29. As “potentially cited” author I can self-archive and add a static WebCite-enriched reference as citation suggestion…

30. As “potentially cited” author I can self-archive and add a static WebCite-enriched reference as citation suggestion…

31. … or I provide a dynamic link to the WebCite archiving form (“WebCite this!”)

32. … or I provide a dynamic link to the WebCite archiving form (“WebCite this!”)

33. Click on “WebCite this” populates the archiving form with metadata from the cited author

35. (the same approach can be used by authors of wikis, datasets etc.)

36. Implementation from a publisher / editor point of view

37. Level 1-4 implementation Time since author saw the cited webdocument Author “webcites” document immediately (or reference manager takes care of this) Editors stipulate this in their Instructions for authors Editor/Copyeditor “webcites” cited document before publication 1 2 WebCite® immediately archives cited webreferences on publication (combing XML files) 3 Retrospective focussed crawling of old articles 4

39. Level 1-Implementation by journal editors: Instructions for authors

42. Implemented by >200 journals

43. What’s next Future developments

52. www.medicine20congress.com , Toronto, Sept 4-5 th , 2008

54. Appendix

57. <ref id=&quot;ref19&quot;> <label>19</label> － － <nlm-citation citation-type=&quot;web&quot;> <article-title>Who Gets ALS</article-title> <source>ALS Association</source> <access-date>2008 Apr 25</access-date> － <comment> <ext-link xlink:type=&quot;simple&quot; xlink:href=&quot; http:// www.alsa.org/als/who.cfm &quot; ext-link-type=&quot;uri&quot;> http:// www.alsa.org/als/who.cfm </ext-link> </comment> <pub-id pub-id-type=“other&quot;>5Y0NuDIU9</pub-id> </nlm-citation> </ref>

58. <ref id=&quot;ref19&quot;> <label>19</label> － － <nlm-citation citation-type=&quot;web&quot;> <article-title>Who Gets ALS</article-title> <source>ALS Association</source> <access-date>2008 Apr 25</access-date> － <comment> <ext-link xlink:type=&quot;simple&quot; xlink:href=&quot; http:// www.webcitation.org/query?url = http:// www.alsa.org/als/who.cfm &date =2008-04-25 &quot; ext-link-type=&quot;uri&quot;> http:// www.webcitation.org/query?url = http:// www.alsa.org/als/who.cfm &date =2008-04-25 </ext-link> </comment> </nlm-citation> </ref>