Reconsider the Source: Implications of Vanishing Online Citations in Communication Journals

Abstract

This invited essay focuses on the use of Internet footnotes in academic journals, an increasingly popular practice that may undermine scholarship—and the teaching thereof—in every discipline. Recent studies have documented that online footnotes disappear from the original source, undermining communication research reliability and replicability. The half-life of Internet footnotes also has pedagogical ramifications. The authors recount findings from their several investigations and propose methods to stabilize online footnotes in scholarly works.