Reference Rot in Theses: A HiberActive Pilot is an extension of work conducted by EDINA, whose role as co-investigator on a two-year Hiberlink project(i) investigated how web links such as software, datasets, blogs, websites etc cited in scientific publications might fail to lead to the resources being referenced by developing approaches that can be integrated easily in the publication process.

Hiberlink built directly upon a pilot study (ii) from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) which confirmed that as many as 30% of the web links in a selection of 400,000 arXiv.org papers did not function, and that 65% of the remaining links referred to a resource that was not archived, and hence in danger of disappearing without a trace. To address this problem the Hiberlink project developed a plug-in (for Zotero) that could immutably link to the web resource at time of citation. This was achieved by 'archiving' snapshots of said web resource in an appropriate archive (e.g. Internet archive) in order that the content at time of citation has fixity and is subsequently retrievable.

Working collaboratively EDINA and Library & University Collections will endeavor to connect with the research community via Doctoral Training Centres / Research Offices based within the three Colleges of the University of Edinburgh. By liaising with key researchers and PhD students Reference Rot in Theses aims to leverage their subject expertise and engage with and understand citation processes within Electronic Theses in relation to reference rot, at three crucial points in the lifecycle: theses preparation; submission; publication. 

Such local engagement will facilitate further development of the Hiberlink plug-in extensible across reference manager platforms, and investigate the utility of  publication platforms such as OJS or DSpace as a possible capture mechanism for theses within the University. Prototype development of such a toolset would have utility and worth across national and international scholarly communication practice.