Perma, DOIs, and Citing Internet Sources for the Law Review

Rule 18.2.1(d) of the 22nd edition of The Bluebook (2025) states that all online content cited by an author should be "captured and stored in a permanent setting." 

This can be satisfied several ways:

1. By citing to an already-existing permanent URL such as a DOI or Handle, which can commonly be found for journal articles, datasets, and digital archival material.

2. By using a reliable web-archiving service such as Perma to capture a snapshot of a blog post, social media post, working paper, or other ephemeral, publicly-available web content.

3. By downloading and keeping the resource on file locally, which is appropriate for paywalled content such as articles from subscription-only websites. In this case, the citation ends with the following parenthetical: "(on file with the author)."

Journal article with a DOI

When a resource has a DOI, append the DOI URL directly to the end of the citation. Do not include the standard URL or a Perma link. 

Please note that this use of DOIs differs slightly from The Bluebook Rule 18.2.2(b).

Scanned archival document with a Handle

When a resource has a Handle, append the Handle URL directly to the end of the citation. Do not include the standard URL or a Perma link. 

Please note that this use of Handles differs slightly from The Bluebook Rule 18.2.2(b).

Blog post with a Perma link

For content that is public to the web and does not have a DOI or Handle (such as a blog or government webpage), append the standard URL to the end of the citation, followed by a Perma link in brackets.

Paywalled article from an online newspaper

For content that is behind a paywall that does not have a DOI or Handle (such as a news article), append the standard URL to the end of the citation, followed by the parenthetical "(on file with the author)."

These papers and articles help explain why permanent URLs are particularly important in scholarly and legal citations.