Assessing Accessibility in Four Library and Information Sciences Journals: A Comparative Study

The present study targets the rate of accessibility and decay of internet citations for the articles published in four LIS journals available through Emerald database for the 2005-2008 period. The findings indicated that of the 2886 URL cited, 1858 (64%) were accessible while the rest were inaccessible. Using Internet Explorer, Internet Archive and Google, the inaccessible citations were reduced to 5%. URL accessibility demonstrated that 60% of the internet based citations are accessible through the URL cited. Among the error messages received, file error represented the highest (61%). URL distribution showed that the. net and. gov domains are more enduring and persistant when compared with. edu,. org and. com domains. The average internet citation for each article was 4.8.