DOIs work for referencing resources because someone, e.g. a scholarly publisher, has a self-interest in making sure that DOI-based links keep working. They put

DOIs work for referencing resources because someone, e.g. a scholarly publisher, has a self-interest in making sure that DOI-based links keep working. They put a concerted effort in making that happen. When referencing "web at large" resources that reside on any kind of web server out there, the admin of that web server is typically not very interested in putting work in to keep links working. Hence, the person putting a link to a "web at large" resource in, or the platform on which such link is published, caries the burden to keep the link working. Our Robust Links work (http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/ http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/) is all about how that can be done. As someone in this thread says, it involves "metadata". But not the kind of metadata that's mentioned in his post; it's all more webbie than that. Note that link rot is not the only problem for "web at large resources". Content drift is another: content at the end of a link changes. See also my comment in the Mozilla Science discussion "What makes code a research object" (https://github.com/mozillascience/code-research-object/issues/18 https://github.com/mozillascience/code-research-object/issue...). And see our extensive study regarding reference rot in scholarly communication (http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115253 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115253).