Influence of language and file type on the web visibility of top European universities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to detect whether both file type (a set of rich and web files) and language (English, Spanish, German, French and Italian) influence the web visibility of European universities. Design/methodology/approach A webometrics analysis of the top 200 European universities (as ranked in the Ranking web of World Universities) was carried out by a manual query for each official URL identified by using the Google search engine (April 2012). A correlation analysis between visibility and file format page count is offered according to language. Finally, a prediction of visibility is shown by using the SMOreg function. Findings The results indicate that Spanish and English are the languages that correlate most highly with web visibility. This correlation becomes greater though moderate when considering only PDF files. Research limitations/implications The results are limited due to the low correlation between overall page count and visibility. The lack of an accurate search engine that would assist in link counting procedures makes this process difficult. Originality/value An observed increase in correlation although moderate while analysing PDF files (in English and Spanish) is considered to be meaningful. This may indirectly confirm that specific file formats and languages generate different web visibility behaviour on European university web sites.Orduña Malea, E.; Ortega, JL.; Aguillo, IF. (2014). Influence of language and file type on the web visibility of top European universities. Aslib Journal of Information Management. 66(1):96-116. doi:10.1108/AJIM-02-2013-0018S96116661Aguillo, I.F. and Granadino, B. (2006), “Indicadores web para medir la presencia de las universidades en la Red”, Revista de universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 68-75.Aguillo, I.F. , Granadino, B. , Ortega, J.L. and Prieto, J.A. (2006), “Scientific research activity and communication measured with cybermetrics indicators”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Tecnology, Vol. 57 No. 10, pp. 1296-1302.Aguillo, I.F. , Ortega, J.L. and Fernández, M. (2008), “Webometric ranking of World universities: introduction, methodology, and future developments”, Higher Education in Europe, Vol. 33 Nos 2-3, pp. 233-244.Angus, E., Thelwall, M., & Stuart, D. (2008). General patterns of tag usage among university groups in Flickr. Online Information Review, 32(1), 89-101. doi:10.1108/14684520810866001Araujo Serna, L. and Martínez Romo, J. (2009), “Detección de Web Spam basada en la recuperación automática de enlaces”, Procesamiento del lenguaje natural, No. 42, pp. 39-46.Bar-Ilan, J. (2002), “Methods for measuring search engine performance over time”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 53 No. 4, pp. 308-319.Bar-Ilan, J. 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(2004), “A longitudinal study of web pages continued: a consideration of document persistence”, Information Research, Vol. 9 No. 2.Kousha, K. , Thelwall, M. and Abdoli, M. (2012), “The role of online videos in research communication: a content analysis of YouTube videos cited in academic publications”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 63 No. 9, pp. 1710-1727.Kousha, K. , Thelwall, M. and Rezaie, S. (2010), “Using the web for research evaluation: the integrated online impact indicator”, Journal of Informetrics, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 124-135.Lawrence, S. and Giles, L. (1999), “Accessibility of information on the web”, Nature, Vol. 400, pp. 107-109.Lazarinis, F. (2007), “Web retrieval systems and the Greek language: do they have an understanding?”, Journal of information science, Vol. 33 No. 5, pp. 622-636.Lewandowski, D. (2008). Problems with the use of web search engines to find results in foreign languages. 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Cultural consequences of computing technology

Computing technology is clearly a technical revolution, but will most probably bring about a cultural revolution\ud as well. The effects of this technology on human culture will be dramatic and far-reaching. Yet, computers and\ud electronic networks are but the latest development in a long history of cognitive tools, such as writing and printing.\ud We will examine this history, which exhibits long-term trends toward an increasing democratization of culture,\ud before turning to today's technology. Within this framework, we will analyze the probable effects of computing on\ud culture: dynamical representations, generalized networking, constant modification and reproduction. To address the\ud problems posed by this new technical environment, we will suggest possible remedies. In particular, the role of\ud social institutions will be discussed, and we will outline the shape of new electronic institutions able to deal with the\ud information flow on the internet

Research assessment in the humanities: problems and challenges

Research assessment is going to play a new role in the governance of universities and research institutions. Evaluation of results is evolving from a simple tool for resource allocation towards policy design. In this respect "measuring" implies a different approach to quantitative aspects as well as to an estimation of qualitative criteria that are difficult to define. Bibliometrics became so popular, in spite of its limits, just offering a simple solution to complex problems. The theory behind it is not so robust but available results confirm this method as a reasonable trade off between costs and benefits. Indeed there are some fields of science where quantitative indicators are very difficult to apply due to the lack of databases and data, in few words the credibility of existing information. Humanities and social sciences (HSS) need a coherent methodology to assess research outputs but current projects are not very convincing. The possibility of creating a shared ranking of journals by the value of their contents at either institutional, national or European level is not enough as it is raising the same bias as in the hard sciences and it does not solve the problem of the various types of outputs and the different, much longer time of creation and dissemination. The web (and web 2.0) represents a revolution in the communication of research results mainly in the HSS, and also their evaluation has to take into account this change. Furthermore, the increase of open access initiatives (green and gold road) offers a large quantity of transparent, verifiable data structured according to international standards that allow comparability beyond national limits and above all is independent from commercial agents. The pilot scheme carried out at the university of Milan for the Faculty of Humanities demonstrated that it is possible to build quantitative, on average more robust indicators, that could provide a proxy of research production and productiivity even in the HSS

Open source repositories: Implications for libraries

Software that is accepted as “Open source” should comply with 10 conditions which are itinerated in the paper. The paper subsequently describes the application of open source initiatives in the digital library context. Three open source digital library initiatives developed by the Digital Library Research Group at the Faculty of Computer Science and information Technology, University of Malaya are highlighted. These are; (a) MyManuskrip: digital library of Malay manuscripts; (b) MyAIS : Digital library of Malaysian scholarly journals and conference proceedings; and (d) DSpace@Um: a digital library of dissertations, theses and final year project reports. Other “free” systems such as EJUM: electronic journal of university of Malaya is also described to highlight the slight difference between open source and being free. The paper also describes the libraries involved in the initiatives and the changing eco-system which libraries must accept to embrace the open source culture

Identifying institutional relationships in a geographically distributed public health system using interlinking and co-authorship methods

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s11192-016-1839-zLink analysis is highly effective in detecting relationships between different institutions, relationships that are stronger the greater their geographical proximity. We therefore decided to apply an interlinking analysis to a set of geographically dispersed research entities and to compare the results with the co-authorship patterns between these institutions in order to determine how, and if, these two techniques might reveal complementary insights. We set out to study the specific sector of public health in Spain, a country with a high degree of regional autonomy. We recorded all Spanish health entities (and their corresponding URLs) that belong to, and were hyperlinked from, the national government or any of the regional governments, gathering a total of 263 URLs. After considering their suitability for web metric analysis, interlinking scores between all valid URLs were obtained. In addition, the number of co-authored articles by each pair of institutions and the total scientific output per institution were retrieved from Scopus. Both interlinking and co-authorship methods detect the existence of strength subnets of geographically distributed nodes (especially the Catalan entities) as well as their high connectivity with the main national network nodes (subnet of nodes distributed according to dependence on national government, in this case Spain). However, the resulting interlinking pattern shows a low but significant correlation (r = 0.5) with scientific co-authorship patterns. The existence of institutions that are strongly interlinked but with limited scientific collaboration (and vice versa) reveals that links within this network are not accurately reflecting existing scientific collaborations, due to inconsistent web content development.Ontalba Ruipérez, JA.; Orduña Malea, E.; Alonso-Arroyo, A. (2016). 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Linguistic patterns of Academic web use in Western Europe. Scientometrics, 56(3), 417–432.Vaughan, L. (2006). Visualizing linguistic and cultural differences using web co-link data. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(9), 1178–1193.Vaughan, L., & Thelwall, M. (2003). Scholarly use of the web: What are the key inducers of links to journal web sites? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(1), 29–38.Vaughan, L., & Thelwall, M. (2004). Search engine coverage bias: Evidence and possible causes. Information Processing and Management, 40(4), 693–707.Vaughan, L., & Wu, G. (2004). Links to commercial websites as a source of business information. Scientometrics, 60(3), 487–496.Vaughan, L., & You, J. (2006). Comparing business competition positions based on Web co-link data: The global market vs. the Chinese market. Scientometrics, 68(3), 611–628.Weber, M. S., & Monge, P. (2011). The flow of digital news in a network of sources, authorities, and hubs. Journal of Communication, 61(6), 1062–1081.Wilkinson, D., Harries, G., Thelwall, M., & Price, L. (2003). Motivations for academic Web site interlinking: Evidence for the Web as a novel source of information on informal scholarly communication. Journal of information science, 29(1), 49–56.Wilkinson, D., & Thelwall, M. (2013). Search markets and search results: The case of Bing. Library and Information Science Research, 35(4), 318–325

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

The metric tide: report of the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management

This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. The review was chaired by Professor James Wilsdon, supported by an independent and multidisciplinary group of experts in scientometrics, research funding, research policy, publishing, university management and administration. This review has gone beyond earlier studies to take a deeper look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. It has explored the use of metrics across different disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact. It has analysed their role in processes of research assessment, including the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It has considered the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems, and the growing power of league tables and rankings. And it has considered the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture. The report starts by tracing the history of metrics in research management and assessment, in the UK and internationally. It looks at the applicability of metrics within different research cultures, compares the peer review system with metric-based alternatives, and considers what balance might be struck between the two. It charts the development of research management systems within institutions, and examines the effects of the growing use of quantitative indicators on different aspects of research culture, including performance management, equality, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and the ‘gaming’ of assessment systems. The review looks at how different funders are using quantitative indicators, and considers their potential role in research and innovation policy. Finally, it examines the role that metrics played in REF2014, and outlines scenarios for their contribution to future exercises