Predicting the longevity of resources shared in scientific publications

TL;DR

This study investigates factors influencing the longevity of shared resources in scientific publications, revealing that sharing practices and dissemination venues significantly impact resource persistence over time.

Contribution

It identifies key factors affecting resource longevity, emphasizing the importance of sharing practices and dissemination venues over author reputation or journal prestige.

Findings

Sharing location and method are crucial for resource longevity

Author reputation and journal prestige are less influential

Long-lasting resources are often shared in specific, accessible venues

Abstract

Research has shown that most resources shared in articles (e.g., URLs to code or data) are not kept up to date and mostly disappear from the web after some years (Zeng et al., 2019). Little is known about the factors that differentiate and predict the longevity of these resources. This article explores a range of explanatory features related to the publication venue, authors, references, and where the resource is shared. We analyze an extensive repository of publications and, through web archival services, reconstruct how they looked at different time points. We discover that the most important factors are related to where and how the resource is shared, and surprisingly little is explained by the author's reputation or prestige of the journal. By examining the places where long-lasting resources are shared, we suggest that it is critical to disseminate and create standards with modern technologies. Finally, we discuss implications for reproducibility and recognizing scientific datasets as first-class citizens.