James Ho points out a real problem in the obsolescence of hyperlinks in online journals. This is of course a more general problem for the World Wide Web, but it is amplified for online journals and in particular I feel for JIME. The Journal of Interactive Media in Education encourages online citations and also encourages work on leading-edge issues. This means that references sometimes go to grey materials, such as personal archives or conference versions of articles, even if a more authoritative printed source is also available. In the case of JIME, while the percentage of broken links is initially surprising, it seems likely that Ho is correct that roughly half of citation links over two years old have problems. However it is worth considering what this means in practice. A typical hyperlinked reference will include the traditional reference information of author, title and publisher as well as the link to the resource. When a link fails, readers have the option to see if alternative access to the site gets them what is needed, or to use a general search engine, or to use a specialist search engine such as scholar.google.com. I tried these for the broken links that I could find in the oldest articles from JIME, and in all cases I was able to locate the relevant resource within five minutes. In some cases these may not be the exact resources that the author referred to, as updating will have occurred, but each was suitable to provide the sort of information that I believe was intended by the author. This process is not as convenient as directly clicking on a link, but still compares well to the time required to track down printed information.

Hyperlinked referencing offers too many advantages to be discouraged, as Ho points out: The connectivity aspect is far superior to that implied by a print reference. Ho suggests some good strategies for improving the reliability of hyperlinked references, although adoption of persistent identifiers can only be part of this for academic journals which rely on a wide range of submissions. The three points listed at the end of the article are worthwhile stages in improving practice. However, from the editorial point of view, they need to be approached in a realistic manner:

1. Asking for precise references. This is good practice, but sometimes a homepage link is better than no link.
2. A mechanism for reporting broken links. This can be useful, but only if it is used. Without such a system, but with an easily-accessible email contact, no one has reported any of the broken links on JIME in my six-month period as an editor.
3. De-activation of dead links. Dead links can often lead somewhere useful; thus de-activation would mean adopting an approach that altered published papers for little benefit.

In summary, I believe we should try to do better and that Ho's article has given good advice that will help us improve practice at JIME. However, I am not sure that dead links are "a disservice to the readership of online journals;" rather they are not as good a service as we should hope to provide.