bibtex-1.0, or maybe not

[Schneider, Thomas (NIH/NCI) [E]]

Paulo Ney:

> The problem Thomas is that URL is ephemera.

I agree!!  (You can call me Tom.)

> Most used by the big publishers have session information in them and
> what is valid for you is not valid for me. My library offers me
> several URLs with access to content -- they all depend on my login.

Agreed.  I often cut off the session information (material after a '?'
in a URL) and check that the URL is still valid if I don't have a DOI.
(I get the DOI URL, then edit it using my 'fb' script and launch it
with my 'http' script both of which are links on my desktop.  So it is
quick and painless.  My tools:
https://alum.mit.edu/www/toms/toolkit.html)

> CTAN has some manuals containing hundreds of URLs -- which NONE of
> them work.

:-(  Maybe an effort can be made to clean that up and provide DOIs?

> If you have a DOI, you have something, if you don't --
> there is not a point in even using it. It may disappear before that
> guy that printed the article tries to get to it.

Fortunately the biomedical scientific literature
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) now has DOIs for almost everthing
and so I use those when I can.  For readers of my papers it's very
convenient - they just click through the DOI to read the reference. 
For example, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279758

Tom

  Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.
  Senior Investigator
  National Institutes of Health
  National Cancer Institute
  Center for Cancer Research
  RNA Biology Laboratory
  Biological Information Theory Group
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  schneidt at mail.nih.gov
  https://ccr.cancer.gov/staff-directory/thomas-d-schneider
  alum.mit.edu/www/toms
  https://alum.mit.edu/www/toms