Academic referencing of internet-based resources

Abstract

The rapid growth of the Internet has outstripped conventions for citing material from that source. Distinguishing material as a [computer file] does not provide sufficient information about the platform necessary for reading it. The URLprovides useful information, but augmenting it with other details such as author and date not only provides a more meaningful citation, its similarity to conventional bibliographical notation lends a greater degree of legitimacy in academic discourse. The article considers information derivable from the URL, and HTML documents (including non-displayed source text), in order to derive bibliography and in-line text citations for various kinds of material. The conventions proposed are also applicable to Gopher, FTP, Usenet News, journals distributed by listservers, and email. © 1995 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.