Stupid question: Why can’t journals just mandate an actual URL link to a study on the last page, or the exact issue something was printed in? Surely both of those would be easily confirmable, and both would be easy for a scientist using “real” sources to source (since they must have access to it themselves already).
Like, it feels silly to me that high school teachers require this sort of thing, yet scientific journals do not?
My guess is TikTok.