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Perma.cc for Law Review: Overview of Perma.cc

What is Perma.cc?

Perma.cc was built by the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard to stop the problem of "link rot" that occurs when users get the "page not found" or 404 error after clicking on a link. Perma.cc helps to preserve the online sources that are cited and makes those sources accessible to the readers.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Stanford Law School's Robert Crown Law Library for creating a LibGuide for that law school's journal members. That guide served as the inspiration and model for this LibGuide.

Why Create a Perma Link?

1. Prevent Link Rot

Link rot is a problem especially in academic scholarship and court opinions. According to Perma.cc, link rot is "a big problem, especially for academic scholarship and judicial opinions, which depend heavily on citations to stable sources that readers can access. For example, a study conducted by researchers at Harvard Law School found that more than 70% of the links in a sample of law journals and 50% of the links in Supreme Court opinions no longer work."

2. Preserve a version of a webpage as it appeared at the time

Webpages are dynamic in nature and can change rapidly. Even if the URL for that webpage still works, the content very well could have changed from when the author cited to it. 

Perma.cc provides a great example: 

"Suppose you're a professor working on an article and you want to link to the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List. Because that list changes over time, your link is going to rot and your future readers won't be able to access your actual source at the original URL. That's bad for you and your readers.

But if you give Perma.cc the web address - e.g. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten - our software will visit the page, make a record of it and give you a unique URL that points to the preserved record - e.g. perma.cc/T8U2-994F.

You can add the new Perma Link to your citation, and your future readers will be able to access the intended source no matter what happens to the original page."

3. Increase the access to sources for readers and ensure the long-term value of the Oklahoma City University Law Review as a research resource

Even if the Law Review keeps files of every source used during an article's tech check, those sources are only available to members of the Law Review. By using Perma.cc for cited electronic sources, all current and future readers of the Law Review will be able to view the links.