Take the 2-minute tour ×  I'm curious about the "properness" of
using shortened links (a la bit.ly or tinyurl) in research
papers. I haven't been able to find any sort of definitive
reference about whether or not this is accepted or frowned upon.
I found a blot post by a professor at Texas A&M who stated he
was going to use shortened links in an upcoming paper.  I'm
working on a paper that won't be published or anything, but it's
got a lot of online references that make footnotes horridly
ugly, and so I'm taking the opportunity to ask about this.  If
it varies based on publishing area/type (scientific, editorial,
etc.), that would be great to know as well.  Edit: Since it's
coming up in answers... this is a hobby project in which I'm
trying to mathematically describe a multi-level marketing
scheme. It seems some think it would be frustrating to see a
shortened link, perhaps because the actual link would reveal
some helpful information when reading a paper.  But what if it's
simply a pdf that I was able to fi