perma.cc: About Perma & How to Register

Perma.cc is a service to create a preserved copy of a website being cited in publications and provide persistent links to that preserved copy. This process creates a snapshop-in-time so that readers see the resource being cited as the author intended. By using perma.cc, you can mitigate link rot within your citations; link rot is when web pages become unavailable or when the content on those pages shifts. Perma.cc is a service developed and maintained by the Harvard Law Library.

As a Cornell faculty, student, staff member or organization engaged in publishing, you can register for a free account. Unlike private accounts with subscription-based limitations on number of perma.cc links created, your Cornell-affiliated account allows you to create an unlimited amount of perma.cc links. This account can be used for your own authorship or as part of the editorial and publication process for Cornell-affiliated journals.

Perma.cc is appropriate for any publicly accessible online resource; however, we encourage using DOIs when available for materials published in a journal or repository that has a preservation policy.

A perma.cc link is limited to a single URL. If wishing to cite multiple pages on a website, different perma.cc links will need to be created for each page.

To request a free account, please contact cul_webarchivist@cornell.edu using a Cornell email address.

Styles for citing a perma.cc link will vary depending on the citation manual used; however, we recommend including both the original URL as well as the perma.cc URL in the citation; you may consider prefixing the perma.cc URL with "archived at:".