4 ms·

They could simply list the expanded links on the last page of the magazine.

• jlgreco 13y ago
  Exactly, or even just issue a yearly book containing the entire mapping. That would save printing since most people probably don't currently care about the expanded form, though in the future they would still be able to look it up in the library system. (They could also start doing this now, while they can't just retroactively add the expanded forms to editions they have already printed.)
• telephonetemp 13y ago
  Does any existing publication do this? Because providing both shortened and full URLs like this sounds like a great (i.e., retrospectively obvious) way to achieve a balance between "UX" of the magazine and longevity.
  • afandian 13y ago
    Yes. CrossRef.org, which is the registration agency for DOIs (digital object identifiers) does this for URLs in basically the entire scholarly publishing industry. This combats link rot by ensuring that the database of metadata is always up-to-date, and with other initiatives.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• ynniv 13y ago
  I think this is a great idea. The casual reader will type in the short url (giving the publisher tracking and control), but the expansion will be available long as the print issue survives. This still fails if only an article survives (by clipping, photocopy, etc), but that seems like an acceptable tradeoff. And until it's a common idea it would be helpful to annotate such shortened links so that someone unfamiliar with the publisher will recognize them as having a printed expansion included. Superscript "*" usually refers to a note on that page, so perhaps a superscript ">>"?
  • indrax 13y ago
    If not for copyright, a magazine page could probably store a compressed copy of every cited url. I suppose one might argue that this is an educational use. It's for future academics and has no commercial impact.