Would You Cite a Web Page?

Species pages in The Nearctic Spider Database are peer-reviewed in the very traditional sense. But, instead of doling out pages that need to be reviewed, I leave it up to authors to anonymously review each others' works. Not just anyone can author a species page; you at least need to show me that you have worked on spiders in some capacity. Once three reviews for any page have been received and the author has made the necessary changes (I can read who wrote what and when), I flick the switch and the textual contributions by the author are locked. There is still dynamically created content on these species pages like maps, phenological charts, State/Province listings, etc. However, at the end of the day, these are still just web pages, though you can download a PDF if you really want to.

Google Scholar allows you to set your preferences for downloading an import file for BibTex, EndNote, RefMan, RefWorks, and WenXianWang so I thought I would duplicate this functionality for species pages in The Nearctic Spider Database, though limited to BibTex and EndNote. I'm not at all familiar with the last three reference managers and I suspect they are not as popular as EndNote and BibTex. Incidentally, Thomson puts out both EndNote and RefMan and recently, they released EndNoteWeb. As cool as EndNoteWeb looks, Thomson has cut it off at the knees by limiting the number of references you can store in an online account to 10,000. Anyone know anything about WenXianWang? I couldn't find a web site for that application anywhere. So, here's how it works:

First, it's probably a good idea to set the MIME types on the server though this is likely unnecessary because these EndNote and BibTex files are merely text files:

EndNote: application/x-endnote-refer (extension .enw)
BibTex: ?? (extension .bib)

Second, we need to learn the contents of these files:

EndNote: called "tagged import format" where fields are designated with a two-charcter code that starts with a % symbol (e.g. %A). After the fields, there is a space, and then the contents. It was a pain in the neck to find all these but at least the University of Leicester put out a Word document HERE. Here's an example of the file for a species page in The Nearctic Spider Database:

%0 Web Page
%T Taxonomic and natural history description of FAM: THOMISIDAE, Ozyptila conspurcata Thorell, 1877.
%A Hancock, John
%E Shorthouse, David P.
%D 2006
%W http://www.canadianarachnology.org/data/canada_spiders/
%N 9/27/2007 10:40:40 PM
%U http://www.canadianarachnology.org/data/spiders/30843
%~ The Nearctic Spider Database
%> http://www.canadianarachnology.org/data/spiderspdf/30843/Ozyptila%20conspurcata

BibTex: Thankfully, developers at BibTex recognize the importance of good, simple documentation and have a page devoted to the format. But, the examples for reference type are rather limited. Again, I had to go on a hunt for more documentation. What was of great help was the documentation for the apacite package, which outlines the rules in use for the American Psychological Association. In particular, p. 15-26 of that PDF was what I needed. However, where's the web page reference type? Most undergraduate institutions in NA still enforce a no web page citation policy on submitted term papers, theses, etc. so it really wasn't a surprise to see no consideration for web page citations. So, what is the Encyclopedia of Life to do? The best format I could match for EndNote's native handling of web pages was the following:

@misc{hancock30843,
author = {Hancock, John},
title = {Taxonomic and natural history description of FAM: THOMISIDAE, Ozyptila conspurcata Thorell, 1877.},
editor = {Shorthouse, David P.},
howpublished = {World Wide Web electronic publication},
type = {web page},
url = {http://www.canadianarachnology.org/data/spiders/30843},
publisher = {The Nearctic Spider Database},
year = {2006}
}

Now, BibTex is quite flexible in its structure so there could very well be a proper way to do this. But, the structure must be recognized by the rule-writing templates like APA otherwise it is simply ignored.

The EndNote download is available at the bottom of every authored species page in the database's website via a click on the EndNote icon (example: http://www.canadianarachnology.org/data/spiders/30843). I have no idea if the BibTex format above is appropriate so I welcome some feedback before I enable that download.

But, all this raises a question...

Would you import a reference to a peer-reviewed web page into your reference managing programs and, if you are an educator, should you consider allowing undergraduates an opportunity to cite such web pages? Would you yourself site such pages? Do we need a generic, globally recognized badge that exclaims "peer-reviewed" on these kinds of pages? Open access does not mean content is not peer-reviewed or any less scientific. Check out some myth-busting HERE. What if peer-reviewed web pages had DOIs, thus taking a great leap away from URL rot and closer toward what Google does with its index - calculations of page popularity. Citation rates (i.e. popularity) is but one outcome of the DOI model for scientific papers. If I anticipated a wide, far-reaching audience for a publication, I wouldn't care two hoots if it was freely available online as flat HTML, a PDF, or as MS Word or if the journal (traditional or non-traditional) has a high impact factor as mysteriously calculated by, you guessed it, Thomson ISI. If DOIs are the death-knoll for journal impact factors, are web pages the death knoll for paper-only publications?