WEBOMETRICS: An indicator of web presence

FA-ED, VENUSMANGACO, ORPHA

What is Webometrics?

Webometrics is.... (a) a set of quantitative techniques for

tracking and evaluating the impact of web sites and online ideas and

(b) the information science research field that developed these ideas.

• According to Björneborn and Ingwersen (2004), the definition of webometrics is "the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the Web drawing on bibliometric ad informetric appraches."

• A second definition of webometrics has also been introduced, "the study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals using techniques that are not specific to one field of study" (Thelwall, 2009), which emphasizes the development of applied methods for use in the wider social sciences.

• The term webometrics was coined in 1997 by Tomas Almind and Peter Ingwersen in recognition that informetric analyses could be applied to the web

WHY WEBOMETRICS?

.The Ranking Web or Webometrics is the largest academic ranking of Higher Education Institutions. Since 2004 and every six months an independent, objective, free, open scientific exercise is performed by the Cybermetrics Lab (Spanish National Research Council, CSIC) for the providing reliable, multidimensional, updated and useful information about the performance of universities from all over the world based on their web presence and impact.

• Webometrics Ranking original and still valid main objective is to support Open Access (OA) initiatives and to promote global access to academic knowledege as produced by universities worldwide. Ranking intends to be a useful tool showing the commitment of the institutions to the OA  through carefully selected web indicators. In this new edition we introduce two new ones that intend to reflect better the quality output (excellence) of the research mission and the level of knowledge transfer (openness) of the third mission. 

• Webometrics only publish a unique Ranking of Universities in every edition. The combination of indicators is the result of a careful investigation and it is not open to individual choosing by users without enough knowledge or expertise in this field.

• Webometrics is a ranking of all the universities of the world, not only a few hundred institutions from the developed world. Of course, “World-class” universities usually are not small or very specialized institutions.

• Webometrics uses link analysis for quality evaluation as it is a far more powerful tool than citation analysis or global surveys.

• In the first case, bibliometrics only counts formal recognition between peers, while links not only includes bibliographic citations but also third parties involvement with university activities.

• Surveys are not a suitable tool for World Rankings as there is not even a single individual with a deep (several semesters per institution), multi-institutional (several dozen), multidisciplinary (hard sciences, biomedicine, social sciences, technologies) experience in a representative sample (different continents) of universities worldwide.

• It intend to motivate both institutions and scholars to have a web presence that reflect accurately their activities. If the web performance of an institution is below the expected position according to their academic excellence, university authorities should reconsider their web policy, promoting substantial increases of the volume and quality of their electronic publications.

• Webometrics is continuously researching for improving the ranking, changing or evolving the indicators and the weighing model to provide a better classification. It is a shame that a few rankings maintain stability between editions without correcting errors o tuning up indicators.

CRITERIA IN WEBOMETRICS

RANKING

CRITERIA IN WEBOMETRICS RANKING

ACTIVITY (50%)• PRESENCE (1/3). The global volume of

contents published on the university webdomains as indexed by the largest commercial search engine (Google). It counts every webpage, including all the formats recognized individually by Google, both static and dynamic pages. For the purposes of the Ranking the web presence is a good proxy of the activities performed by the Universities in the 21st century.

• OPENNESS (1/3). The global effort to set up institutional research repositories is explicitly recognized in this indicator that takes into account the number of rich files (pdf, doc, docx, ppt) published in dedicated websites according to the academic search engine Google Scholar. Both the total files and the ones with correctly formed file names are considered (for example, the Adobe Acrobat files should end with the suffix .pdf) for the (new) period 2008-2012.

• EXCELLENCE (1/3). The academic papers published in high impact international journals are playing a very important role in the ranking of Universities. Deepening the commitment to this measurement started in previous edition we are introducing the Excellence indicator, the university scientific output being part of the 10% of the most cited papers in their respective scientific fields. Although this is a measure of high quality output of research institutions, the data provider Scimago group supplied non-zero values for more than 5200 universities (period 2003-2010).

VISIBILITY (50%)• IMPACT. The quality of the contents is

evaluated through a "virtual referendum", counting all the external inlinks that the University webdomain receives from third parties. Those links are recognizing the institutional prestige, the academic performance, the value of the information, and the usefulness of the services as introduced in the webpages according to the criteria of millions of web editors from all over the world. The link visibility data is collected from the two most important providers of this information: Majestic SEO and ahrefs, that provides an overlapping scenario very close to a true global coverage