Web citations in the nursing literature: how accurate are they?

One problem with using Web citations is whether those documents will be available over time. We examined 573 Web citations in articles published in nursing journals and checked their availability (either by direct link or by searching the main site). There was a mean of 3.1 Web citations per article. Most Web citations were to documents that related to clinical practice, for example, clinical guidelines and explanations of clinical conditions and treatments. Of the 573 Web citations, 414 (72.3%) were still available; of those, 229 (55.3%) were able to be accessed by direct link and the other 185 (44.7%) by searching the main Web site. However, 159 (27.7%) of the references were not available, not even by searching the Internet using key terms from the citation. Considering that more than a fourth of the Web citations in this study were no longer available, authors need to be cautious about using the Web as a primary source of information for their publications.