What the Internet says about Science

Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton and Yale

2009-09-08T13:35:00.002+02:00

When comparing Webometrics with other Rankings of Universities most of the discrepancies appear related with striking web policies of the involved institutions. As we mentioned in the FAQ, there are about 500 universities with two or more central webdomains, sometimes maintaining the old domain even after years of the official change. The bad naming practices could explain most of the unexpected (delayed) positions of world class universities but not all of them.

Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton and Yale are very prestigious organizations that should be probably amongst the Top 10 universities of the World, at least according to thousands of people from all over the world that probably never spent even a single day in their facilities. The actual performance in the XXIth century of these universities as shown by Webometrics is still very impressive but their positions are far from the Top 10.

Marketing could explain this subjective perception (Of course, how many German elite universities could you cite?), but there should be additional explanations for the delayed ranks. Our current suggestion is that the lack of large institutional repositories at Princeton and Yale explain part of the situation, but we were unable to find additional reasons.

Suggestions and comments are welcomed.

Revolutionary Road

2009-08-27T13:14:00.002+02:00

Many of our readers believe that our objectives are to promote Open Access and to rank Universities according to their web presence. However, the reality is slightly different as there is only one objective: Reinforce electronic publication through ranking institutions.

As probably you already know, the bibliometric evaluation procedures are in fact responsible of the explosive growth of academic publications. If "Publish or Perish" is the current motto of scholars, our efforts are intended to change it to "Web Publish or Perish" in a nearby future.

This aim should be taken into account for understanding the recent changes in the ranking methodology. In the last year we published the web indicators as ordinals because ranks have far more impact than percentages. Contrary to other ranking editors, our composite indicator combined ranks not values, clearly favouring top universities (second is twice first, even if there is little percentage difference between them).

Now we decided to have the best of both worlds: The WR indicator is calculated with the normalized values (without changes in the weighting), but we publish the individual indicators (size, visibility, rich files and Scholar) as ranks, as in previous editions.

Do not forget to read our new FAQ!.

Changes scheduled for the July 2009 edition

2009-03-05T12:49:00.002+01:00

Comments are welcomed regarding the following major changes scheduled for the next edition.

• University of Helsinki. A 20% of the size and visibility raw numbers are taken, considering that the City Hall shares the same domain

• Imperial College data results from combining ic.ac.uk and imperial.ac.uk

• Also in UK, University of Manchester is ranked according to the combination of its two domains

• The three domains of the Technical University of Munich are combined.

• The most controversial could be combining Caltech domain with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory one (under jpl.nasa.gov)

• The very large repositories Citeseer and CiteSeerX are excluded from the calculations related the Pennsylvania State University

• The same applies for the database DBLP regarding University of Trier in Germany

• Harvard Business School will be merged with Harvard University and the former entry will be deleted.

• Johns Hopkings “extra” domains will be combined with the central one and the additional entries will be deleted

• The figures from “La Jornada” subdomain will be excluded from the UNAM statistics

• The data from the two Cardiff University's domains will be merged

• The Jussieu campus webdomain will be merged to the UPMC and its entry deleted

• Griffith University two domains will be combined

• The two domains of Universität Zurich are to be combined

• New and old domains for Ludwig Maximilians Universität Munchen will be unified.

• Same for Technische Universität Dortmund.

• The two/three domains of these Catalonian universities will be combined: Barcelona, Autónoma de Barcelona and Politècnica de Catalunya.

• The “universities de Strasbourg” domain (u-strasbg.fr) will have an independent entry.

• These US universities ranking will take into account previous and current domains: Kansas State, Northeastern University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (the last one perhaps not)

• Under consideration merging the Dutch University Hospitals with their corresponding Universities

• The City College (CUNY) will be included in the main list even without having independent domain

• Lund Institute of Technology will be merged into Lund University and its entry discarded

• There a few universities with faculties having fully independent domains. As there is central domain all these extra entries will be deleted but the data will not combined. Currently this applies to University of Zagreb , Warsaw University and Universidad de la República (Uruguay).

Major changes, Major problems

2008-09-01T16:55:00.000+02:00

The blog is re-activated

One of the most frequent criticism the Ranking Web receive is the lower than expected ranks of very prestigious Universities. Imperial College or Technical University of Munich clearly appears delayed as compared with other Rankings.

The Ranking Web is based on an internet unit, the institutional domain. MIT domain is mit.edu and all the calculations are obtained from pages under that domain. However, a few institutions maintain more than one domain for their pages, sometimes with a secondary domain even larger than the official central one. This situation penalizes their Web performance and it is also a bad practice because affect negatively their web visibility and it is very confusing for foreign visitors.

These web policies are clearly identified in the Notes section and we expect managers try to combine all the pages under only one domain. However, in the last months we discover that important Universities are changing their domains. Most of cases the objective is to improve the "marketing" quality of the acronym, making it easy to remember or more descriptive.

There is no problem on these changes. Clearly, the Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign is better described by illinois.edu than by the older uiuc.edu. Case Western Reserve University is now case.edu instead of cwru.edu. The already mentioned Imperial College is referred as imperial.ac.uk instead of the more obscure ic.ac.uk.

So, what is the problem?. The most concerning issue about these changes is that many of them are applied to the full website very slowly, so during long periods many of the servers still maintains the old domain. The central website has the new address but other important sites, even the library and the repositories, still are available only under the old domain.

In a few cases the old domain is better ranked than the new one and we use the best positioned unit but the penalty is severe and misunderstandings are frequent.

During the last July 2008 edition a few examples are very conspicuous (new/old):

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (uc.cl/puc.cl)
Thomas Jefferson University (jefferson.edu/tju.edu)
Tech. Univ. Braunschweig (tu-bs.de/tu-braunschweig.de)
Tech. Univ. Helsinki (tkk.fi/hut.fi)
Univ Mediterranee (univmed.fr/mediterranee.univ-aix.fr)
Northeastern Univ (neu.edu/northeastern.edu)
Univ Catholique de Louvain (uclouvain.be/ucl.ac.be)
Victoria Univ of Wellington (victoria.ac.nz/vuw.ac.nz)

Among others...

Do not forget to visit the Rankings Web of Hospitals, Repositories and Business Schools!.

Not my fault

2006-12-11T17:45:00.000+01:00

When visitors check the Webometrics Ranking of Universities, sometimes the institution they are seeking is not in the Catalogue or its classification is clearly below expected. There are several technical reasons for these situations:

Universities without independent domain name. The ranking and catalogue only include universities with their own institutional domain. More than 200 institutions worldwide are still publishing their pages in directories under the domain of their internet hosting company or other shared domain. Many African universities (Nigerian federal ones) prevent us of further WR calculation due to this limitation.

Universities with multiple institutional domains. Most universities have extra domains unrelated to main institutional one, usually devoted for specific and small impact projects or spin-offs organizations. However there some striking situations where two equally valid names are used for the same university or a large part of the sites are under another (older?) domain. It is not feasible to combine the data for the different domains and the global WR of the institution does not reflect its real impact. Two good examples are Imperial College (ic.ac.uk, imperial.ac.uk) and St. Petersburg University (spbu.ru, pu.ru).

Changes in the institutional domain. The use of a new domain imposes an important penalty in the calculation of several web indicators. Recent split of the Jussieu campus (jussieu.fr) of the University of Paris (now .upmc.fr, .univ-paris7.fr and others) can be cited. Unfortunately this is fairly common situation that affects even to universities in the Top 100, but a worrisome example is changes in the name of academic subdomains of many Indian universities, that could explain their delayed positions.

Use of shared domains. Different universities and research centres share the same or similar domains in at least two groups of French Universities: Marseille (almost fixed) and Strasbourg. This situation is a bit messy and web rankings of these institutions are not reflecting their true position. A similar situation could be applied to Helsinki University which on the contrary has an overvalued rank because the city also use helsinki.fi domain!. There is no unique domain for the Universidad de la Republica of Uruguay, so each Faculty has its own institutional domain.

Seeing Double .. or Triple

2005-09-07T11:11:00.000+02:00

A common problem in webometrics is the lack of standardization in the URL addresses, so there is no even informal agreement about what position in the directory tree should be occupied by a team, journal, conference or personal page. In recent studies about electronic journals (available only in Spanish) we express our concern about the loss of impact and visibility due to bad practices in naming the URLs.

For the whole set of World Universities we found a significant number of institutions with two or even three different institutional domains for the same pages. This duplicate naming system is confusing and it is having a negative effect on the webometric indicators of those institutions: The number of inlinks decrease as they are distributed among different domains. The following Table consists of universities for which a main institutional domain has not been identified. Any help will be welcomed:

ALBRIGHT COLLEGE

http://www.alb.edu

http://www.albright.edu

ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE

http://www.ais.edu

http://www.ais.artinstitutes.edu

ART INSTITUTES

http://www.aii.edu

http://www.artinstitutes.edu

BEIJING INTERNATIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY

http://www.bisu.edu.cn

http://www.erwai.edu.cn

BRISTOL UNIVERSITY

http://www.bris.ac.uk

http://www.bristol.ac.uk

BUSINESS SCHOOL OSTRAVA

http://www.eco.cz

http://www.vsp.cz

CERAM SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

http://www.ceram.edu

http://www.ceram.fr

CHIANG MAI UNIVERSITY

http://www.chiangmai.ac.th

http://www.cmu.ac.th

CHONGQING INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

http://www.cqit.com.cn

http://www.cqit.edu.cn

CLEVELAND CHIROPRACTIC COLLEGE

http://www.cleveland.edu

http://www.clevelandchiropractic.edu

DICKINSON STATE UNIVERSITY

http://www.dickinsonstate.edu

http://www.dsu.nodak.edu

DONGSHIN UNIVERSITY

http://www.dongshinu.ac.kr

http://www.dsu.ac.kr

EAST CHINA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

http://www.ecgi.jx.cn

http://www.ecit.edu.cn

ESCP-EAP EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

http://www.eap.ccip.fr

http://www.eap.fr

http://www.escp.fr

FACULTY OF QUIMICA UNIVERSITY OF LA REPUBLICA

http://www.bilbo.edu.uy

http://www.fq.edu.uy

GDYNIA MARITIME UNIVERSITY

http://www.am.gdynia.pl

http://www.wsm.gdynia.pl

HACETTEPE UNIVERSITY

http://www.hacettepe.edu.tr

http://www.hun.edu.tr

HANBAT NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

http://www.hanbat.ac.kr

http://www.tnut.ac.kr

HANDONG GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

http://www.han.ac.kr

http://www.handong.edu

HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

http://www.huji.ac.il

http://www.hebrewuniversity.edu

HUNAN UNIVERSITY

http://www.hnu.cn

http://www.hunu.edu.cn

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE

http://www.iitr.ac.in

http://www.rurkiu.ernet.in

INSEAD BUSINESS SCHOOL

http://www.insead.edu

http://www.insead.fr

INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DE CHIHUAHUA

http://www.itch.edu.mx

http://www.itchihuahua.edu.mx

INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DE MERIDA

http://www.itmerida.edu.mx

http://www.itmerida.mx

INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES OF BAD HONNEF

http://www.fhbadhonnef.de

http://www.fh-bad-honnef.de

IVANO-FRANKIVSK STATE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF OIL & GAS

http://www.ifdtung.if.ua

http://www.nung.edu.ua

JIANGSU POLICE INSTITUTE

http://www.jpi.gov.cn

http://www.jspi.cn

JUILLIARD SCHOOL

http://www.juilliard.edu

http://www.julliard.edu

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY LONDON

http://www.king.ac.uk

http://www.kingston.ac.uk

KOREA MARITIME UNIVERSITY

http://www.hhu.ac.kr

http://www.kmaritime.ac.kr

KWANGWOON UNIVERSITY

http://www.kw.ac.kr

http://www.kwangwoon.ac.kr

LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

http://www.lbs.ac.uk

http://www.lbs.lon.ac.uk

http://www.london.edu

MAKHANLAL CHATURVEDI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF JOURNALISM

http://www.makhanlaluniversity.org

http://www.mcu.ac.in

MANAGEMENT CENTER INNSBRUCK

http://www.fh-tirol.at

http://www.mci.at

MIRYANG NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

http://www.miryang.ac.kr

http://www.mnu.ac.kr

NANJING UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

http://www.njuct.edu.cn

http://www.njut.edu.cn

OMSK STATE UNIVERSITY

http://www.omsu.omskreg.ru

http://www.omsu.ru

http://www.univer.omsk.ru

OPEN UNIVERSITY UK

http://www.open.ac.uk

http://www.open.edu

OSLO UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

http://www.hio.no

http://www.khio.no

PAI CHAI UNIVERSITY

http://www.paichai.ac.kr

http://www.pcu.ac.kr

PLANTIJN UNIVERSITY OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

http://www.plantijn.be

http://www.plantijn-hs.be

POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF MARCHE ANCONA

http://www.unian.it

http://www.univpm.it

PROTESTANT UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES OF REUTLINGEN-LUDWIGSBURG

http://www.efh-ludwigsburg.de

http://www.efh-reutlingen-ludwigsburg.de

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

http://www.qmul.ac.uk

http://www.qmw.ac.uk

SCHOOL OF MINES ALES

http://www.ema.fr

http://www.ensm-ales.fr

SHANDONG JIAOTONG UNIVERSITY

http://www.jncc.edu.cn

http://www.sdjtu.edu.cn

ST JOHN'S COLLEGE

http://www.sjca.edu

http://www.sjcsf.edu

STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY

http://www.stonybrook.edu

http://www.sunysb.edu

SZENT ISTVAN UNIVERSITY

http://www.szie.hu

http://www.sziu.hu

TOMSK STATE UNIVERSITY OF CONTROL SYSTEMS AND RADIOELECTRONICS

http://www.tasur.edu.ru

http://www.tusur.ru

UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY DUNDEE

http://www.abertay.ac.uk

http://www.tay.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES HARZ

http://www.fh-harz.de

http://www.hs-harz.de

UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD

http://www.brad.ac.uk

http://www.bradford.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

http://www.ed.ac.uk

http://www.edinburgh.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX

http://www.essex.ac.uk

http://www.sx.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

http://www.ncl.ac.uk

http://www.newcastle.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

http://www.shef.ac.uk

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON

http://www.soton.ac.uk

http://www.southampton.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER

http://www.westminster.ac.uk

http://www.wmin.ac.uk

URGENCH STATE UNIVERSITY

http://www.ursu.uzpak.uz

http://www.urdu.uzpak.uz

http://www.urgenchsu.narod.ru

WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY

http://www.wau.nl

http://www.wu.nl

WYZSZA SZKOLA ADMINISTRACJI PUBLICZNEJ W BIALYMSTOKU

http://www.wsap.bialystok.pl

http://www.wsap.edu.pl

YEUNGNAM UNIVERSITY

http://www.yeungnam.ac.kr

http://www.yu.ac.kr

YULIN NORMAL UNIVERSITY

http://www.ylu.cn

http://www.ylu.edu.cn

Invoked on the Web

2005-09-02T08:39:00.000+02:00

The citation analysis is not the only way to analyze the bibliographic characteristics of a paper although it is a key method for bibliometric studies. In a similar way, some proposals intend to restrict the webometric studies to the link analysis and specifically the sitation analysis, the formal links between electronic papers. Obviously, there are many other possibilities to exploit web data, including informal references that can benefited from the large sample size of the webspace.

Cronin et al. (Invoked on the Web. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49 (14): 1319-1328) in 1998 proposed to analyse the number of times a researcher’s name appeared cited in web pages. This is equally valid for a title of a paper (introduced formally by Liwen Vaughan and used by Hildrun Kretschmer too, the name of an institution, or selected terms or phrases (You can check some of the papers by Judit Bar-Ilan).

From a methodological point of view, and taking into account that search engines do not cover all the Web and there important bias in their results, invocation can be calculated easily using quotation marks around the name in the search engines. The result is referred as the number of times this name is cited in the Web. Some authors call it Web visibility, although we prefer to reserve this word for link visibility. This indicator usually favours large, well-known, old institutions independently of their real effort for having a relevant Web presence.

Some Peruvian universities were chosen to compare several webometric indicators. Ranked according to the invocation, there are some placements that are not correlated with those obtained with the other indicators.

Although invocation measures can be interesting for some analysis, a cautionary use is recommended as it is not possible to assign a unique, unambiguous universal name for every institution.

Short list of search engines

2005-08-12T11:20:00.000+02:00

There are two preliminary criteria to be satisfied by webometrics friendly search engines:

1. To have a large and independent self crawled database
2. The recovery system will allow the filtering of results according to url-related delimiters

Taking into account these requirements, currently only six engines are useful for quantitative analysis purposes:

- Google (www.google.com)
- Yahoo Search (search.yahoo.com)
- MSN Search (search.msn.com)
- Teoma (www.teoma.com)
- Gigablast (www.gigablast.com)
- Exalead (www.exalead.com)

Google has a database size probably exceeding 11 bn pages, including a good coverage of the so-called rich files and other dynamic and special filetypes. On the negative side, the number of dead-links has increased a lot in this engine. Individual records of large databases (e.g.: PubMed) are also indexed, but without covering the full size strangely.

Current figures for Yahoo are not available as its databases have increased greatly during July. An educated guess is around the 10-12 bn mark. Actual figures provided by the answers to a large number of request are misleading as the number provided decreases when exploring further pages than first answers' one.

MSN Search looks to have the most comprehensive geographical coverage, including Asian regions usually not well indexed by the other major engines.

Gigablast and Exalead still have very small databases. However, as the overlap among engines is so low, combined search using several engines is clearly an option.