Analyzing web citations availability and half‐life in medical journals : A case study in an Iranian university

Purpose – The aim of this study is to compare the situation of internet resource citations in scientific articles of the journals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences from 2005‐2009. Design/methodology/approach – The research method is an analytical survey with webometrics and citation analysis. The internet was used as a tool for accessing articles. They are separately analyzed on the basis of journal name and publication year. The analysis is done using MATLAB and Excel software. Findings – A total of 717 articles from seven journals during five years were reviewed. Of 13,448 citations extracted, 120 internet references were found. The final results indicated that the sum of web citations is less than 1 per cent of total citations and only 52 per cent of internet citations in studied journal articles are available. The average half‐life for the medical journals is estimated to be 1.02 years. Practical implications – To increase the rate of URLs availability, publishers should oblige authors to utilize online archives such as WebCite to preserve expected information for all of the citations referred to in their articles. Originality/value – This research would be valuable since it is the first that studies stability and persistence of URL domains of medical journals published in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences according to type of domain names and file extensions. Moreover, this is the first time that the half‐life for medical universities web citations is calculated.