Link rot is the name for what happens when a hyperlink ceases to connect to its intended target. In the scholarly context, when a hyperlink in a footnote or in the text of an article is broken, this is link rot.
In 2013, Jonathan Zitrain of Harvard Law School and his co-authors found that 50 percent of the links embedded in United States SupremeCourt opinions since 1996, when the first hyperlink was used, no longer directed readers to the the intended target and 75 percent of the links in the Harvard Law Review were dead as well.*
*Zittrain, Jonathan and Albert, Kendra and Lessig, Lawrence, Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations (October 1, 2013). Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 13-42, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2329161 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2329161
Zittrain, Jonathan and Albert, Kendra and Lessig, Lawrence, Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations (October 1, 2013). Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 13-42, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2329161 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2329161
Craigle, Valeri and Retteen, Aaron and Keele, Benjamin John, Ending Law Review Link Rot: A Plea for Adopting DOI (June 22, 2022). Legal Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 41, 2022, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0270319X.2022.2089810, University of Utah College of Law Research Paper No. 505, Texas A&M University School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 23-03, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4143861
Zittrain, Jonathan, The Internet is Rotting. The Atlantic. June 30, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/06/the-internet-is-a-collective-hallucination/619320/