Can Google's PageRank be used to find the most important academic Web pages?

Main articleGoogle's PageRank is an influential algorithm that uses a model of Web use that is dominated by its link structure in order to rank pages by their estimated value to the Web community. This paper reports on the outcome of applying the algorithm to the Web sites of three national university systems in order to test whether it is capable of identifying the most important Web pages. The results are also compared with simple inlink counts. It was discovered that the highest inlinked pages do not always have the highest PageRank, indicating that the two metrics are genuinely different, even for the top pages. More significantly, however, internal links dominated external links for the high ranks in either method and superficial reasons accounted for high scores in both cases. It is concluded that PageRank is not useful for identifying the top pages in a site and that it must be combined with a powerful text matching techniques in order to get the quality of information retrieval results provided by Google

Investigating the Impact of the Blogsphere: Using PageRank to Determine the Distribution of Attention

Much has been written in recent years about the blogosphere and its impact on political, educational and scientific debates. Lately the issue has received significant attention from the industry. As the blogosphere continues to grow, even doubling its size every six months, this paper investigates its apparent impact on the overall Web itself. We use the popular Google PageRank algorithm which employs a model of Web used to measure the distribution of user attention across sites in the blogosphere. The paper is based on an analysis of the PageRank distribution for 8.8 million blogs in 2005 and 2006. This paper addresses the following key questions: How is PageRank distributed across the blogosphere? Does it indicate the existence of measurable, visible effects of blogs on the overall mediasphere? Can we compare the distribution of attention to blogs as characterised by the PageRank with the situation for other forms of Web content? Has there been a growth in the impact of the blogosphere on the Web over the two years analysed here? Finally, it will also be necessary to examine the limitations of a PageRank-centred approach

Measuring the Institution's Footprint in the Web

Purpose: Our purpose is to provide an alternative, although complementary, system for the evaluation of the scholarly activities of academic organizations, scholars and researchers, based on web indicators, in order to speed up the change of paradigm in scholarly communication towards a new fully electronic 21st century model. Design/methodology/approach: In order to achieve these goals, a new set of web indicators has been introduced, obtained mainly from data gathered from search engines, the new mediators of scholarly communication. We found that three large groups of indicators are feasible to obtain and relevant for evaluation purposes: activity (web publication); impact (visibility) and usage (visits and visitors). Findings: As a proof of concept, a Ranking Web of Universities has been built with Webometrics data. There are two relevant findings: ranking results are similar to those obtained by other bibliometric-based rankings; and there is a concerning digital divide between North American and European universities, which appear in lower positions when compared with their US & Canada counterparts. Research limitations / implications: Cybermetrics is still an emerging discipline so new developments should be expected when more empirical data become available. Practical implications: The proposed approach suggests the publication of truly electronic journals, rather than digital versions of printed articles. Additional materials such as raw data and multimedia files should be included along with other relevant information arising from more informal activities. These repositories should be Open Access, available as part of the public Web, indexed by the main commercial search engines. We anticipate that these actions could generate larger Web-based audiences, reduce the costs of publication and access and allow third parties to take advantage of the knowledge generated, without sacrificing peer review, which should be extended (pre- & post-) & expanded (closed & open). Originality / value: A full taxonomy of web indicators is introduced for describing and evaluating research activities, academic organizations and individual scholars and scientists. Previous attempts for building such classification were more incomplete and not taking into account feasibility and efficiency

Measuring the Institution's Footprint in the Web

Purpose: Our purpose is to provide an alternative, although complementary, system for the evaluation of the scholarly activities of academic organizations, scholars and researchers, based on web indicators, in order to speed up the change of paradigm in scholarly communication towards a new fully electronic 21st century model. Design/methodology/approach: In order to achieve these goals, a new set of web indicators has been introduced, obtained mainly from data gathered from search engines, the new mediators of scholarly communication. We found that three large groups of indicators are feasible to obtain and relevant for evaluation purposes: activity (web publication); impact (visibility) and usage (visits and visitors). Findings: As a proof of concept, a Ranking Web of Universities has been built with Webometrics data. There are two relevant findings: ranking results are similar to those obtained by other bibliometric-based rankings; and there is a concerning digital divide between North American and European universities, which appear in lower positions when compared with their US & Canada counterparts. Research limitations / implications: Cybermetrics is still an emerging discipline so new developments should be expected when more empirical data become available. Practical implications: The proposed approach suggests the publication of truly electronic journals, rather than digital versions of printed articles. Additional materials such as raw data and multimedia files should be included along with other relevant information arising from more informal activities. These repositories should be Open Access, available as part of the public Web, indexed by the main commercial search engines. We anticipate that these actions could generate larger Web-based audiences, reduce the costs of publication and access and allow third parties to take advantage of the knowledge generated, without sacrificing peer review, which should be extended (pre- & post-) & expanded (closed & open). Originality / value: A full taxonomy of web indicators is introduced for describing and evaluating research activities, academic organizations and individual scholars and scientists. Previous attempts for building such classification were more incomplete and not taking into account feasibility and efficiency

Online informationssøgning i en overgangstid: - med særligt fokus på det historiske forløb i et større dansk forskningsbibliotek

Over the centuries, searching for information took place through searches in printed works. computers enabled the onset of electronic data processing. In the wake of this, an information industry emerged that partly digitized information in large databases and made the contents of the databases searchable and accessible. This article describes the brief but hectic development where online information search was established as a service in documentation centres. This is exemplified by illustrating the conditions at the then Odense University Library. In the period up to the turn of the millennium, end users of online information gradually took over the search process itself, which led to a reduction in the search activity at the documentation centres, while the total number of searches increased. Gradually, the information search service was adapted to the users’ new needs. The users' use of paid databases remains an area of ​​concern for the library sector, as users often prefer the free bases of the Internet, but they do not necessarily find the best references. Thus, there is still a task in promoting the scientific databases and educating the users. Concepts such as “information literacy” and “digital education” are therefore central to the work of research libraries.&nbsp