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Thank you! Rant: Not linking to the source article is a crime conmited by many outlets trying to report on science. I do not understand that practice. It is ev

Thank you! Rant: Not linking to the source article is a crime conmited by many outlets trying to report on science. I do not understand that practice. It is even worse when the researcher's institution does this in a public press release (MIT is consistently guilty of this). Are these people afraid that their watered down "explanations" are so wromg that even a cursory glance over the paper will show this? Some news sites such as Ars Technica provide the links. They even have agreements with major publishers that allow them to bypass paywalls and provide their readers with links to the the published full text as well.

benologist 7y ago
There's a dated document that leaked at the start of the decade called The AOL Way that sheds a lot of light on these tactics - https://www.slideshare.net/cartercole/the-aol-way-leaked-plan https://www.slideshare.net/cartercole/the-aol-way-leaked-pla... External links are used for SEO and generally reserved for partner-websites or their own properties to recirculate traffic. Here we have an article reposted from space.com to scientificamerican.com that only links to nature.com and livescience.com. Future US owns space.com + livescience.com, and Springer Nature owns scientificamerican.com + nature.com.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  It doesn't need to be a link. A citation at the bottom of the article would suffice.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- hisnameismanuel 7y ago
  Hey, this is my field. It's not as easy as you've laid it out. A lot of SEO marketers try to get links into articles. This is part of what they do. Many of them are legit. Enough are not legit. This causes links to get pointed to shady websites. It also happens that legit websites get taken over and re-built as shady websites. This has gotten to the point where many newsmedia organizations or publishers have set blanket policies that NO ONE is to be linked to, or at the least no one receive will receive do-follow link.

benologist 7y ago

There's a dated document that leaked at the start of the decade called The AOL Way that sheds a lot of light on these tactics - https://www.slideshare.net/cartercole/the-aol-way-leaked-plan https://www.slideshare.net/cartercole/the-aol-way-leaked-pla... External links are used for SEO and generally reserved for partner-websites or their own properties to recirculate traffic. Here we have an article reposted from space.com to scientificamerican.com that only links to nature.com and livescience.com. Future US owns space.com + livescience.com, and Springer Nature owns scientificamerican.com + nature.com.

nerdponx 7y ago
It doesn't need to be a link. A citation at the bottom of the article would suffice.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
hisnameismanuel 7y ago
Hey, this is my field. It's not as easy as you've laid it out. A lot of SEO marketers try to get links into articles. This is part of what they do. Many of them are legit. Enough are not legit. This causes links to get pointed to shady websites. It also happens that legit websites get taken over and re-built as shady websites. This has gotten to the point where many newsmedia organizations or publishers have set blanket policies that NO ONE is to be linked to, or at the least no one receive will receive do-follow link.