| It depends how deep you want to go into the web archiving rabbit-hole, but using something like `archivenow`[0] would probably be the local optimum in terms of convenience, robustness, and permanence. It's "a tool to push web resources into web archives", which basically entails making requests of archiving services (like the Wayback machine, for example).
Using `archivenow --all <url>`, you can back up <url> to a whole bunch of different services, and get links to snapshots of that page at the time of access. This is mostly sufficient, so long as at least one service is trustworthy and doesn't shut down unexpectedly.
One issue that might come up is that the archives might miss content if the user has to interact with the page a bunch in order to reveal it, but that's unlikely to be an issue for the sorts of things an academic would be archiving. As another poster mentioned, some bibliography managers have this capability baked in, or can acquire it with a plugin. However, if you want more control, you might consider using something like `pywb`[1] to make your own web archive, and then host it yourself (e.g., on S3 or something).
For more robustness, you could also publish those WARC files as torrents, or on IPFS, or if you're really cool, as part of the transaction messages on some blockchain (provided that you can stomach the transaction fees and don't anticipate having a large audience in China). The above will probably suffice so long as the Internet continues to function as a going concern.
To accommodate concerns about what happens in the case of total societal collapse, I've been backing up the papers that I cite by converting to binary[2] and preserving the result via aluminum punchcards, which I then mail to Sam Altman since he's got a way better game plan for the end times than I do[3]. I'm not sure if aluminum is optimal for this purpose though, both for material science reasons and because I've been informed that I am under investigation for my role in some sort of aluminum smuggling ring.
If that fails, my last backup plan entails constructing an allegorical representation of the papers in question (which is surprisingly easy-- the Hero's Journey from Joseph Campbell[4]'s exegesis is basically about differential equations anyways), which I will then craft into a compelling mythology and teach to the local youths.
Hopefully this will ensure that the citations are preserved via oral tradition even in the wake of cataclysmic change.
Figuring out the BibTeX for this archival format will be pretty tricky, though. But yeah, unless you have some extra aluminum lying around, `archivenow` or whatever's built-in to your reference manager should do the trick. --- 0. github.com/oduwsdl/archivenow 1. github.com/webrecorder/pywb 2. After stripping most of the markup removing images using `pandoc`, as aluminum is expensive. 3. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doo... 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell |
That's going to be one HUUUUUGE mythology... I'm looking forward to it!