Rod,
Thanks for sharing with us the information. I already imagined that things like that could happen, but it's always better to argue having real examples.
Anyway, just in case someone reading the story decides to blame URLs, I just wanted to say that in my opinion the main issue here is not the technology or the GUID format being used. It's the business model and the management strategy.
I can easily imagine similar things happening to DOIs, LSIDs or other kinds of issued GUIDs if the institution(s) behind them simply disappear.
Best Regards,
Renato -- IT Researcher CRIA - Reference Center on Environmental Information http://www.cria.org.br/
On 24 Nov 2006 at 13:37, Roderic Page wrote:
The Open Access web-only journal "Phyloinformatics" seems to have disappeared, with the Internet address http://www.phyloinformatics.org now up for sale. This means the articles have just disappeared!
There weren't many papers published, but some were interesting and have been cited in the mainstream literature.
This also illustrates the problems with linking to digital resources using URLs, as opposed to identifiers such as DOIs. With the loss of the domain name, this journal has effectively died.
A sobering lesson...
Regards
Rod