Transcript Academic Websites and Web Rankings

Academic Competitiveness
and Website Rankings
Alina Andreica, Carmen Ciplea
[email protected]
[email protected]
Babes-Bolyai University, ClujNapoca, Romania
Topics
• Proficient IT strategies
• Academic websites
• Goals
• Evaluation: organizational, technical
• Traffic, feed-back / log analysis
• Webometrics
• Romanian institutions’ ranking
• BBU positioning & measures for rank
improvement
• BBU web site
• Conclusions
Strategies for Implementing
ICT within Organizations
Organization objective & activity target field
Management style & strategy
Financial Resources
Human Resources Policy
• The larger the organization, its
resources &investments, the more
relevant are ICT “consequences”
• IT strategy must be designed according
to the organization’s goals & resources
adjusted & approved by management
levels
Strategies for Implementing
ICT within Organizations
• ICT implementations should be
adapted to:
•
The aim of the organization &
activity target field
• different objectives and target fields
impose specific characteristics on IT
strategies
• Financial resources / possibilities
• the degree of willingness to invest in
ICT depends on involvement &
awareness of IT benefits
Strategies for Implementing
ICT within Organizations
• ICT implementations should be
adapted to:
•
Human resources policy – in IT
• create proper strategies within a plan
of efficient ICT implementation
• network admins, software developers,
project managers
• Management style and strategy –
• Integrating IT strategy into the overall
management strategy
• awareness of IT efficiency
Academic web sites goals
• Promote the university’s
• Educational programs
• Research programs
• E-learning programs
• Social responsibility programs
• Alumni
• Ensure communication means
towards the public community
Academic web sites goals
• BBU specifics
• Multicultural character – linguistic
policy
• Tradition & dynamism
• Research & educational opportunities
- Competitive programs
• Comprehensive structure
• Bridging Eastern-Western cultures
• High quality infrastructure
• Student tutorial support
Web sites evaluation
• Organizational – the degree in which it
complies to the organization’s goals,
requirements, resources and level of
development –information relevance,
content structuring, visual identity and
facilities should comply these
requirements
• Technical – accessibility, navigability,
interactivity, density –criteria list
adapted from a procedure proposed
within the Marketing Institute of the
Westfalische Universität Münster
http://www.marketing-centrum.de/ifm/de/
Technical Web sites
evaluation
• Accesibility – navigability characteristics, speed
and simplicity in finding the desired information
• all pages and hyperlinks are functional
• free / password based access to information; the site
includes contact information
• help / FAQ section, confidentiality terms / terms of use ;
• Interactivity – images and animation should be
attractive but not excessive
• if additional software is needed to view the content (for
example Flash Player), it should be downloadable
• are advertising objects included on the page ?
(excessive ads are not recommended and often
companies who are greedy in placing other ads create
themselves a better image) ;
Technical web sites evaluation
• information density – information should be
logically structured, easy to find
• well-adjusted and balanced between home and
secondary pages
• images and graphs highlighten the content
• pages display a pleasant design;
• information up-to-date – the site should display
the date of releasing the information and the
date of the last update
• copyright mark and reference should also be present;
• information accuracy and correctness –
published information should be correct,
relevant and detailed in respect with user needs
• if the information doesn’t belong to the site owner,
references should be specified
Web sites evaluation
• Web analytics tools
• Traffic - for example the analyser
www.alexa.com
• Ranking in search engines www.googlerankings.com;
www.yahoosearchrankings.com
• Color contrast (readability) – for example the
analysor www.accesskeys.org
• Speed in page loading – for example the
analyser www.websiteoptimization.com
• a web site should be systematically
monitored by feed-back analysis using
traffic and log information analysis
Academic Web rankings
• Cybermetrics Research Group –
www.webometrics.info, part of the
National Research Council of Spain,
proposed an Internet ranking
methodology of academic institutions
• since the mid of this decade, based on
its prior researches in web metrics
indicators
• aims at revealing the importance
measuring the Internet (web) data for
evaluating scientific activity,
competitiveness & impact
Academic Web rankings
The proposed indicators
http://www.webometrics.info/methodology.html
are:
• Visibility – the number of external links to the
evaluated domain – the methodology synthesizes
the results obtained from Yahoo search engine
(previously also from s Google, Live Search and
Exalead) and normalizes the obtained values;
• Size – the number of pages in the evaluated
domain – the methodology synthesizes the results
obtained from Google, Yahoo, Live Search and
Exalead search engines (results are normalized,
best and worst values excluded, and then the
average value is computed);
Academic web rankings
• Rich files – the number of the files posted in the
evaluated domain; following types are taken into
account: .pdf - Adobe Acrobat PDF file, .ps Adobe Postscript file, .doc - Microsoft Word file,
.ppt - Microsoft Powerpoint file;
• Scholar – the number of published papers in
internationally indexed databases and citations –
originated from the academic domain
• the evaluation is performed using Google Scholar
application http://scholar.google.com
• The final rank WR [webm] is obtained by
weighting 50% the visibility indicator V, 20% the
size indicator S and 15% the rich files RF and
scholar SC indicators:
WR=4*V+2*S+1*RF+1*SC
Webometrics ranking
Webometrics Ranking of the best placed Romanian universities in the
World's Universities Webometrics Ranking at July 26 2009 (lower rank
is a better hierarchy position) / Source:
http://www.webometrics.info/top4000.asp – accessed July 28, 2009
Top 6 webometrics http://www.webometrics.info/top4000.asp
Webometrics ranking
BBU evolution in Webometrics hierarchy 2008-2009
Source: http://www.webometrics.info/top4000.asp
Note: lower rank represents a better position
Webometrics ranking
Evolution of best placed Romanian universities in
Webometrics hierarchy 2008-2009
Note: good ranking of technical universities since January 2009
Web rankings
10000/rank
Romanian universities in webometrics
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Universitatea
„Babeş-Bolyai”
Universitatea
Politehnica Bucureşti
Universitatea
Bucureşti
ASE Bucuresti
January,
2008
July,
2008
January,
2009
month, year
July,
2009
Universitatea A. I.
Cuza Iasi
Universitatea Tehnica
G. Asachi Iasi
Consistency & security problems
• Trojan Clicker.html virus threat
• http://www.viruslist.com/en/virusesdescribed?c
hapter=153317864
• Infects php applications – moodle calendars,
blogs, forums, galleries by fraudulously
inserting into the page source (tens to)
hundreds of external links, in most cases
invisible, void or automatically generated
• Fraudulous increase in the number of external
links for some academic institutions with tens
/ hundred thousands external links / week !
• Distorsion of visibility ranking!
BBU main website
BBU Admission web site
BBU Students web site
BBU International students
web site
BBU News
BBU academic extensions
Development directions
• Increasing the webometrics visibility
indicator by activating international
cooperations, as well as academic and
public partnerships;
• Continuing to increase the webometrics
size indicator by including all BBU chairs,
research centres, institutes and
academic extensions within BBU domain
ubbcluj.ro
• Implemented measures: websites for
conferences – conference.ubbcluj.ro, grants –
granturi.ubbcluj.ro, institutes –
institute.ubbcluj.ro , academic extensions –
extensii.ubbcluj.ro
Development directions
• Continuing to increase the webometrics size &
rich files indicators by taking advantage of the
decentralized structure of BBU website:
• developing web sites at all BBU levels – faculties,
centres, institues, chairs;
• developing the conferences, research projects,
international programs web sites within ubbcluj.ro
domain;
• posting relevant information files on these websites;
• Developing staff web sites
• Continuing to increase the scholar indicator by
extending the publication of BBU’s research
activity in internationally recognized journals and
publishing houses, indexed in scientific databases
Conclusions
• Adaptation to organization’s goals –
BBU specific features
• Web sites evaluation tools
• Traffic analysis & feed-back monitoring
• Web rankings & criteria
• Webometrics criteria
• Size, visibility, rich files, scholar
• Ranking accuracy ensurance
• Strategies for ranking improvement