If you are the one who created the shortlinks, it's likely that you have the ability to track how many times it was clicked (if you register at the shortening service) * If you happen to publish a paper in a (closed) journal you are able to interpolate a figure how often your submission was read (if there is a statistical figure how many paper readers actually follow references, footnotes or plain internet links). Did the reviewers took a deep look into your references? From that you can derive a, admittedly problematic, cost-value ratio of the journal. * If it is an online-publication, you can track how useful your readers estimate your sources by how often they were clicked. It may also give you a clue that either your reasoning was not clear enough and required the reader to follow a link or that the topic of your reference is very interesting to the reader(s). * You are also able to track down the countries the clicks come from (for what it's worth) Web marketing applied to science.
Joseph Reagle <joseph.2011@reagle.org> schrieb am 22.07.2011 um 15:44 in Nachricht <201107220944.15949.joseph.2011@reagle.org>: On Friday, July 22, 2011, Johann Hoechtl wrote: Plus, you don't mention what the possible benefit is...? Impact of sources and tracking distribution of papers would come immediately to my mind
I don't follow, could you explain?