Problem: A study finds a concerning number of digital links in APSR articles are broken.
* Broken hyperlinks significantly hinder research reproducibility and access to data.
Over 25% of links published in the American Political Science Review* were non-functional by 2014.
Key Findings: Reference rot undermines established practices for enhancing scholarly transparency, impacting both new and older articles.
* The issue persists across all publication years analyzed.
* This limits verification and access to supporting materials cited online.
Implications & Solutions:
* Reproducibility suffers when data sources aren't accessible.
* Authors are urged to archive data in stable repositories, use persistent identifiers (like DOIs), or create web snapshots.
| Reference Rot: An Emerging Threat to Transparency in Political Science was authored by John Bullock and Aaron Gertler. It was published by Cambridge in PS in 2017. |
