The effectiveness of the Wayback Machine in Reviving Vanished Web Citations

A Webometric Approach

Abstract

This study examines the availability, decay, and recovery of web citations in College & Research
Libraries (C & R L) journal articles from 2015-2024. A total of 21,384 citations from 497 research
articles were analyzed, of which 9,287 were web citations. Web citation usage increased significantly
over time, rising from 21.49% in 2015 to 66.01% in 2023 (r = 0.931, p = .000). Concurrently, the
proportion of vanished web citations declined (r = 0.901, p = .000), indicating improved link
persistence. HTTP 403 errors formed 56.57% of the observed HTTP errors among vanished web
citations. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine successfully recovered 95.30% of these vanished
web citations, highlighting its effectiveness as a tool to retrieve lost web citations. This study
emphasizes the growing reliance on web sources in academic work and underscores the critical
role of digital preservation tools in maintaining access to scholarly materials over time.