Transcript Webometrics Ranking of World Universities

International colloquium
"Ranking and Research Assessment in Higher Education“. 12-13 December 2007
RANKING WEB OF UNIVERSITIES
VISUALIZATION OF THE EUROPEAN
ACADEMIC WEB SPACE
Isidro F. Aguillo
Cybermetrics Lab (CSIC), Madrid, Spain
www.webometrics.info
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ABOUT US
CSIC, Spanish National Research Council
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The largest public research body in Spain
126 institutes devoted mainly to basic science
20% of the total annual Spanish scientific output
2 Nobel Prizes
Cybermetrics Lab
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Research group at Center of Scientific Information and Documentation
Editors of e-journal Cybermetrics
EU projects EICSTES and WISER
MAVIR network
Consulting services to universities
Staff: Coordinator, 4 PhD, 1 technician
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“POLITICAL” AGENDA
Extended coverage
Ranking Higher Education Institutions Worldwide
Not only Universities from developing countries
But also Universities in the Third World
Covering all missions
Not focusing only on Research
Only a core of 200 (Van Raan)
But also on Teaching and “Third Mission”
Larger and more diverse audiences
Increasing knowledge dissemination
Web Publish or Perish
Promoting Open Access initiatives
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DESIDERATA
Complete scenario
Many indicators
Not only outputs but also inputs based
Methodologically sound
Multivariate non-parametric analysis
Feasibility
Problems with the data
Availability (a few countries in EU & US, a few
hundreds of universities)
Comparability (lack of standards)
Costs
Single 7th FP project over 1.5 MEURO
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WEB PRESENCE
Web is the new scholarly communication tool
For formal results
Electronic journals, repositories (institutional, thematic,
personal)
For informal activities
Teaching, community links, economic impact, institutional
visibility
Reflecting intangibles
Web is the best showcase for University
Favoring mobility of professors and alumni
Reaching larger audiences at lower costs
Allowing better position for international competition for human
resources and funding
Getting prestige and visibility in the digital world
At cheaper costs
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ABOUT THE WEB RANKING
Primary aim is not the League Table
But promoting Open Access initiatives
Sensu lato Universities as producers of all kind of knowledge
It is intended a similar movement to the 80’s & 90’s Publish or
Perish
Current situation
Webometrics ranking is offering larger coverage than other similar
Rankings
Including developing countries’ institutions
Not focusing only on research results
Overall activity, visibility, impact, prestige, and quality is better
reflected in the Web presence
Showing interesting results
Web Bad Practices
Academic Digital Divide
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BUILDING THE MODEL
Existing methods
Google PageRank (link visibility based)
Impact Factor, ratio 1:1 between impact and activity
Indicator WR
Search engines as universal web intermediaries
Institution with independent web domain as unit
Activity accounted by volume of web pages, number of
documents in in rich files formats and papers in Scholar
database
Impact measured by the number of external inlinks
Combining the 4 components with weights according the model
Ranking the results
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WORLD RANKINGS
Webometrics Rank
First published in 2004. From 2006, two editions (January and July)
Higher education Institutions (mostly universities): +15,000 (Jan’08)
R&D related institutions (mostly research centers): +4,800 (Jan’08)
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EXPECTED RESULTS
North America
Stanford University (1st region & world), MIT (2nd), University of
California, Berkeley (3th) and Harvard University (4th)
University of Toronto (28th world)
Europe
Cambridge (1st region), Oxford (2nd), ETH Zurich (3rd)
Asia/Pacific
Tokyo (59th world), National Taiwan (96th), Kyoto (116th) and
Beijing (120th) universities
Australian National (60th), New South Wales (112th)
Latin America
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (68th world)
Universidade de Sao Paulo (128th world)
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UNEXPECTED RESULTS
Up
Pennsylvania State University (5th world)
CiteSeer, index of computer and information science papers
University of Wisconsin, Madison (8th world)
Internet Scout Project
Linkoping University (8th Europe, 62nd world)
Lysator, the Academic Computer Society
Universitat Trier (9th Europe, 64th world)
DBLP, Computer Science Bibliography
Down
Cornell University (7th world)
Arxiv (www.arxiv.org, not under cornell.edu)
Yale University (35th world)
Princeton University (38th world)
California Institute of Technology (42th world)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (jpl.nasa.gov, not under caltech.edu)
Johns Hopkins University (72th world)
School of Medicine (hopkinsmedicine.org, not under jhu.edu)
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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS (I)
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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS (II)
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MAJOR DISCREPANCIES
Bad practices in web domain naming
Universities with two (or three) domains
Recent domain change or not fully completed
Significant parts of the web contents under different
domain or shared with external ones
Biomedicine bias
Linguistic bias
Academic Digital Divide
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BAD PRACTICES
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BIOMEDICINE BIAS
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LANGUAGE BIAS
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UNIVERSITIES BY COUNTRY
Top 200 universities in the Webometrics Ranking (July 2007)
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ACADEMIC DIGITAL DIVIDE
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EUROPEAN ACADEMIC WEBSPACE
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MOSTLY NATIONAL LINKS
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LESSONS
Webometrics is the only academic ranking that provides indicators for
universities worldwide and not only the World- Class ones
Information provided could be useful to increase the commitment to
electronic publication, guiding the Web policies and therefore
improving Web presence and visibility
Web rank is probably highly related to the global level of activities,
prestige and overall performance of the university
Web indicators are not able to discriminate relative contributions but
they are a reliable and feasible way to describe the full picture
Results shown that there is an unexpected academic digital divide as top
European and Japanese universities appear in delayed positions when
comparing with their North American counterparts
EU advantage is not showed in the link analysis as the academic
webspace consists of mainly national groups
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THANK YOU!
¿QUESTIONS?
ISIDRO F. AGUILLO, JOSÉ L. ORTEGA, MARIO FERNÁNDEZ
CYBERMETRICS LAB
CINDOC-CSIC
JOAQUÍN COSTA, 22
28002 MADRID
SPAIN
WWW.WEBOMETRICS.INFO
E-MAIL: [email protected]
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