Perma.cc is a service, currently in beta, that helps authors, editors and publishers protect their work - and their readers - from the ill effects of link rot.

By using Perma, you can archive web pages cited in your work. Each time you archive a web page, Perma generates a unique URL - a "Perma Link" - that will allow you to direct readers to the cited reference even if the original source goes away.

For more information, visit: http://perma.cc/docs.

To create a Perma Link, enter the URL of the web page into the entry box, as shown below, and click on the blue infinity button to direct Perma to create an archive of the contents of that page. At your direction, Perma will archive the web page found at your specified URL. Once processing is complete, Perma will display a thumbnail image of the archived web page and a new Perma Link (such as perma.cc/ABCD-1234) for that archive.

For more information, visit: http://perma.cc/docs/perma-link-creation.

To see all URL’s that you have converted to Perma Links, click on Links in the navigation menu on the left of your dashboard. You can organize links in folders, change the titles of your links, and add notes to each link. The notes are visible to you and to anyone with vesting authority with whom you share the Perma Link. You also can search or sort your links using the search bar above the link list or by clicking the column headings.

For more information, visit: http://perma.cc/docs/perma-link-creation#organize-links.

All web pages you archive through Perma will begin as unvested, temporary archives. Perma will maintain these archives and their associated Perma Links for at least two years following creation. At the end of that temporary period, Perma will give you the option to renew the archived web page for another temporary period, after which the Perma Link may expire.

To become permanent, however, a Perma Link must be vested by someone with vesting authority. Perma’s focus at this stage is to provide lasting links to online materials cited in academic scholarship, judicial opinions and educational materials. Vesting signifies that an individual affiliated with a journal, court or library has confirmed that the archived materials support these goals and should be preserved as a part of the permanent collection of participating libraries.

While we cannot guarantee that links will be preserved forever, we are hosted by university libraries that have endured for centuries, and we are planning to be around for the long term. If we ever do need to shut down, we have laid out a detailed contingency plan for preserving existing data.

For more information, visit: http://perma.cc/docs/perma-link-vesting.

No. Vested Perma.cc links can never be deleted once they are created.

To vest a Perma Link, a user with vesting privileges (a "Vesting User") simply needs to visit the Perma Link URL, review the archived material and click the "Vest" button in the upper right corner of the screen.

If you are affiliated with a law library, law journal or court system, click here to see if your institution is a perma.cc partner. If so, you can contact your institution directly for information about vesting privileges. If you do not see your institution listed, then please contact us at [email protected], and we'll see if we can help.

Click the Feedback link at the bottom of the page or email us at [email protected].

If your library would like to become a Perma.cc library partner, email [email protected], and you will be provided with a library “Registrar” account. This account will allow your library to create “Vesting Organization" accounts for the journals your library chooses to sponsor (traditionally the journals at your institution).

For more information on the role of libraries in Perma.cc, visit: http://perma.cc/docs/libraries

Sponsoring a journal simply means that your library, as an institution, is certifying that a particular publication is a scholarly journal of the sort that a library would subscribe to and archive.

For more information about the Perma.cc user roles, visit: http://perma.cc/docs/perma_user_roles

A registrar's primary responsibility is creating Vesting Organizations within Perma.cc (typically journals associated with your institution) and setting up at lease one Vesting User account for each Vesting Organization. Journals will be able to use those accounts to give access to their staff, so you won’t have to handle account management for all the students that work on a given journal.

The process for making a Vesting Organization in Perma.cc is quick and simple. Go to the "Manage Users" section of your dashboard, click "Vesting Organizatios," and click "add new" next to the "Existing Vesting Organizations" heading.

Once you have added a Vesting Organization, you can add Vesting Users by clicking the "Vesting Users" heading under "Manage Users" and clicking "add new" next to the "Existing Vesting Users" heading. Make sure to assign new Vesting Users to the appropriate Vesting Organization.

For more information about user roles within Perma.cc, visit: http://perma.cc/docs/perma_user_roles.

If your journal would like to become a Vesting Organization, simply email [email protected], and we will connect you with a Registrar library (traditionally the library associated with your institution). The Registrar library will add your journal as a Vesting Organization and create at least one Vesting User account, which will enable you to create the accounts your staff will need to vest Perma.cc Links.

To vest a Perma.cc link, a user with vesting privileges (a "Vesting User") simply needs to the visit the Perma Link URL, review the archived material and click the "Vest" button in the upper right corner of the screen.

For more information, visit: http://perma.cc/docs/perma-link-vesting.

All Vesting Users will have the capability to both create and vest Perma.cc links. Thus, Vesting Users can create Perma.cc Links for cited URLs as part of the subciting process.

Each journal has the ability to formulate its own standard. However, we recommend using a citation format that incorporates the Perma.cc Link URL in brackets after the original URL.

For example: "Title of Online Source, Author, http://www.example.com/the-original-source-URL.html[http://perma.cc/ABCD-1234]."

It's important to note that Perma.cc does not crawl your site like a search engine might, and it does not make its archives available in search engines. It simply saves a copy of a single page at the request of a user, as though the user visited your page and used the "Save as ..." function of their browser.

If you don't want Perma.cc to make archives of your site available online to future readers of scholarly work, we're happy to respect your wishes.

To prevent online archives for entire sections of your site, use a configuration in your robots.txt file like the one below:

User-agent: Perma
Disallow: /private-stuff/

To prevent online archives for a single page, use one of the following meta tags:

<meta name="Perma" content="noarchive" /> <meta name="robots" content="noarchive" />

With either or both of these rules in place, Perma.cc will still allow the user to store the requested page in library archives, but will not display it at the perma.cc website.