First, don’t panic—a broken or outdated code link is common in academic papers, and there are several reliable ways to track down the original code or a working alternative. Start by checking the paper’s publication venue and supplementary materials, then move to archives and community repositories.
Step 1: Check the paper’s official sources
- Look at the journal or conference page for the paper (e.g., IEEE, ACM, Springer, arXiv). Authors often update links there after publication.
- Check the supplementary material section—code is sometimes bundled as a ZIP file or linked in a separate “Data and Code” tab.
- Search the author’s personal or lab website (Google the author’s name + “code” or “software”). Many researchers host code on their own pages even if the paper’s DOI link is stale.
Step 2: Try Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)
If the original URL is dead, paste it into the Wayback Machine. It has snapshots of millions of academic and personal pages. Even if the file itself isn’t archived, you might find a cached version of the README or installation instructions that point to an alternative download.
Step 3: Search code-specific repositories
- GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket: Search for the paper title, method name, or author name. Many authors mirror their code across platforms.
- Zenodo, Figshare, or OSF: These are popular for research artifacts. Search the DOI or exact paper title—authors often deposit code here to get a citable DOI.
- Papers with Code: This site indexes code for thousands of papers. Even if the official link is dead, community reimplementations are often listed.
Step 4: Look for official reimplementations
If the original code is truly gone, search for third-party reimplementations (e.g., “PyTorch implementation of [method name]”). Many popular methods have multiple open-source versions that are verified against the original results. Be sure to check the reimplementation’s test metrics to ensure it matches the paper.
Step 5: Contact the authors (politely)
Authors usually welcome questions. Try emailing the corresponding author (listed on the paper) with a short, specific request: mention the paper title, the dead link, and what you need (e.g., “the training script” or “the dataset split”). Allow 1–2 weeks for a reply. If the author is a student, check their current advisor’s lab page for updated contact info.
Step 6: Use academic tools to verify and organize what you find
When you locate a working version, save it properly—this is where WisPaper’s My Library can help. It auto-extracts metadata and lets you attach PDFs, code notes, or local file paths, so you don’t lose track of the working link or the version you validated.
If you still can’t find it
- Check the paper’s citation context: Sometimes the code is described in a companion paper or technical report.
- Search for the method name + “source code” on Google Scholar or general search—not just the exact URL.
- Record the gap: If the code is genuinely lost, note it in your literature review. Reproducibility issues are a known problem, and your documentation helps others avoid the same dead end.
A broken link is rarely the end of the road—most code survives in some form. With these steps, you’ll either find the original or a reliable alternative in under an hour.
