Research Paper: “Quantifying Orphaned Annotations in Hypothes.is”

The following paper was recently shared on arXiv. It’s an extended version of a paper presented at the 19th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries.
Title
Quantifying Orphaned Annotations in Hypothes.is
Authors
Mohamed Aturban
Old Dominion University
Michael L. Nelson
Old Dominion University
Michele C. Weigle
Old Dominion University
Source
arXiv
Abstract

Web annotation has been receiving increased attention recently with the organization of the Open Annotation Collaboration and new tools for open annotation, such as Hypothes.is. We investigate the prevalence of orphaned annotations , where neither the live Web page nor an archived copy of the Web page contains the text that had previously been annotated in the Hypothes.is annotation system (containing 20,953 highlighted text annotations). We found that about 22% of highlighted text annotations can no longer be attached to their live Web pages.
Unfortunately, only about 12% of these annotations can be reattached using the holdings of current public web archives, leaving the remaining 88% of these annotations orphaned. For those annotations that are still attached, 53% are in danger of becoming orphans if the live Web page changes. This points to the need for archiving the target of an annotation at the time the annotation is created.

Direct to Full Text Article (17 pages; PDF)
See Also: 40 Member Web Annotation Coalition Organized by Hypothes.is Launches (December 1, 2015)

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