From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WebCite
is a service that
archives
web pages
. A user asks WebCite to archive a certain
URL
, and then WebCite will make a copy of what the page looks like at that time.
Authors
use this when writing
citations
. If the webpage changes or is removed ("
link rot
"), there is still a copy on WebCite. This is very important when writing papers for
academic
journals or for school. Using the WebCite service is free (it costs no money.)
WebCite saves many kinds of internet content. Some of these are:
It also saves some
information
("
metadata
") about the original content. This information includes the time it was saved, the
MIME type
, and how long it is. This information is useful because it can prove that the archive version is
authentic
.