You Can’t Get There from Here: Student Citations in an Ephemeral Electronic Environment

This study investigates 1,666 citations to Internet resources from 529 freshman English composition papers from two different years, 1999 and 2004. Web citations are examined in relation to traditional print resources, by type and domain, and with special attention to their persistence through time. After 7 months from submission of the papers for the 1999 sample, 38 percent of the links led to the document cited. After 12 months for the 2004 sample, 45 percent of the links accessed the document. A resubmission of the 1999 citations after 7 years reduced the number of successful links to 9 percent. The instability of Web citations in undergraduate student papers is discussed in the larger context of citation structure, with implications for future scholarship.