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When writing a thesis, is it acceptable practice to cite only the URL of referenced research papers where they are published electronically? Or is it compulsory to give proper authors, title, year of publication, etc... information?
Example:
Data mining is the process of analyzing large data sets in order to discover hidden patterns within these data sets.[1] Stock market prices do not follow random walk.[2]
No, it's not OK to cite URLs because firstly, you are citing ONLY the URL! The URL could change at any given time without notice. Also, you are assuming that everyone is reading your paper electronically and has access to the internet.
You NEED to give the name of the paper, the author(s), the Journal it was published in and the year it was published.
http://dx.doi.org/...) gives a permalink to a paper. However, it is a good to add it to the citation, not to replace it with it. Another choice is using arXiv id (e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/...); in fact it is often used instead of the full citations (but on slides are other informal things, not in papers/theses).
May 6, 2012 at 16:17
Absolutely not! The other answers mention impermanence of URLs, which is an issue, but not, I think, the most important one. The most important reason is that some of the information in a citation, especially the author and year of publication, is important context for interpreting a citation, and is therefore essential content to the paper itself.
The point of a bibliography is not only to identify your sources, but to allow your readers to read those sources themselves, at some indefinite time in the future. Bare URLs rarely serve that function, in part because URLs are (by design) transient, and in part because you cannot assume that your unknown future reader will have internet access. This is the same reason why citations should still include page numbers, even though a quick Google search on the title and authors almost always finds the paper.
On the other hand, books go out of print, library subscriptions lapse, some conference proceedings are only distributed online, some papers are still preprints, and sometimes the source in question is a blog, a usenet post, a source code repository, or a StackExchange question. For sources without permanent reliable offline access, I think you must include a URL in your bibliography, despite its transience, in addition to as much traditional identifying information (authors, title, journal/conference/book title, page numbers, date) as possible.
The MLA Style guide (via Indiana University) says the following:
World Wide Web Sites:
There are many different kinds of web sites, so it is impossible to give just one set of precise instructions for citation format. If you can not find some of the information needed, cite what is available. The following Works Cited/Bibliography examples are only guidelines; utilize the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers for additional examples.
What you need (at minimum):
Site title (if there is no title use a description such as "Home Page") Date you accessed the information URLWhat you need (if available):
Author(s)/Editor(s) name Publication or last update date Organization/Institution name associated with the site
Because URL are (usually) not eternal, but hopefully your publication is, then I wouldn't advise to only put an URL, especially for books or paper. It doesn't add much to make a full biblio item, that can of course include the URL! Note that Bibtex has a special field for url, but you can also add it as a note.
URL sources are a grey area. When possible, cite the original source. For example if you are citing books.google.* , then you need to cite that book as a book and not a URL. For academic publications, there is an OPTIONAL URL field you may use, but this should be in addition to citing the original conference/journal/workshop/etc.
There are circumstances where a URL is the best identifier of the resource, and in those cases, you'll have to cite the URL. For example, I used a URL resource from the libary of congress because it was unpublished historical (circa 1890AD) blueprints scanned into their library.
The best practice is to include standard bibliographic information, a relatively stable hypertext link for current readers (e.g. to the ArXiv), and the DOI.
(I think:) Definitely give a URL if there is one, with the date you down/up-loaded the paper, and perhaps give a revision date of the paper, if it itself gives one.
AND give the more traditional reference information as well.
The URL allows people to find an e-copy, at least for a while. The conventional references do not necessarily produce copies accessible through the internet, though sometimes they do.
For the time being, these two sorts of citations give different information, have different utilities. One may take the pose that one makes the other irrelevant, but I think this is not accurate. The common "objections" to internet-accessible things, that they are "transient", while physical references are "permanent", is disingenuous, upon some thought. First, many good things are transient, which is not an argument against them! Second, physical references are equally transient, if in a different way... usually that many different libraries throughout the world maintain "cached" copies. Well, maybe Google has cached the now-gone document at a vanished URL? :)
In summary, operationally, give all the information you have in citations, even while recognizing that some of it has an expiration date.
For everything that have been reviewed AND permanently archived then the bibliography is fine. For all the rest footnotes are the place to be.
No, it is clearly and everyone agrees, not acceptable practice to cite only the URL. So download a PDF copy of the exact web page. You can even state in the publication that you have a copy of the exact PDF which corresponds with your reference. If anyone asks you for sa copy of the PDF, you may wish to do one of the following:
or
It is not your problem, if the web site will not give you permission, to give others a copy of the saved PDF. However a license violation would be your fault.
