On measuring the impact of hyperlinks on reading
Gemma Fitzsimmons, Mark J. Weal, Denis Drieghe · 2013
We increasingly spend a vast amount of time on the Web and much of that time is spent reading. One of the main differences between reading non-Web based text and reading on the Web is the presence of hyperlinks within the text, linking various related Web content and Web pages together. Some researchers and commentators have claimed that hyperlinks hinder reading because they are a distraction that may have a negative effect on the reader's ability to process the text. However, very few controlled experiments have been conducted to verify these claims.