Utilising content marketing metrics and social networks for academic visibility

There are numerous assumptions on research evaluation in terms of quality and relevance of academic contributions. Researchers are becoming increasingly acquainted with bibliometric indicators, including; citation analysis, impact factor, h-index, webometrics and academic social networking sites. In this light, this chapter presents a review of these concepts as it considers relevant theoretical underpinnings that are related to the content marketing of scholars. Therefore, this contribution critically evaluates previous papers that revolve on the subject of academic reputation as it deliberates on the individual researchers’ personal branding. It also explains how metrics are currently being used to rank the academic standing of journals as well as higher educational institutions. In a nutshell, this chapter implies that the scholarly impact depends on a number of factors including accessibility of publications, peer review of academic work as well as social networking among scholars.peer-reviewe

Constructing experimental indicators for Open Access documents

The ongoing paradigm change in the scholarly publication system ('science is turning to e-science') makes it necessary to construct alternative evaluation criteria/metrics which appropriately take into account the unique characteristics of electronic publications and other research output in digital formats. Today, major parts of scholarly Open Access (OA) publications and the self-archiving area are not well covered in the traditional citation and indexing databases. The growing share and importance of freely accessible research output demands new approaches/metrics for measuring and for evaluating of these new types of scientific publications. In this paper we propose a simple quantitative method which establishes indicators by measuring the access/download pattern of OA documents and other web entities of a single web server. The experimental indicators (search engine, backlink and direct access indicator) are constructed based on standard local web usage data. This new type of web-based indicator is developed to model the specific demand for better study/evaluation of the accessibility, visibility and interlinking of open accessible documents. We conclude that e-science will need new stable e-indicators.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

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). Identifying institutional relationships in a geographically distributed public health system using interlinking and co-authorship methods. Scientometrics. 106(3):1167-1191. doi:10.1007/s11192-016-1839-zS116711911063Aguillo, I. F., Granadino, B., Ortega, J. L., & Prieto, J. A. (2006). Scientific research activity and communication measured with cybermetrics indicators. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1296–1302.Almind, T. C., & Ingwersen, P. (1998). Informetric analyses on the world wide web: methodological approaches to ‘webometrics’. Journal of Documentation, 53(4), 404–426.Barabasi, A. L., & Albert, R. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science, 286(5439), 509–512.Bar-Ilan, J. (2005). What do we know about links and linking? A framework for studying links in academic environments. Information Processing and Management, 41(4), 973–986.Barnett, George A., & Park, Han W. (2014). Examining the international internet using multiple measures: New methods for measuring the communication base of globalized cyberspace. Quality and Quantity, 48(1), 563–575.Eurostat. (2011). Regions in the European Union. Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics. NUTS 2010/EU-27. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-RA-11-011/EN/KS-RA-11-011-EN.PDF Accessed 16 August 2015.García-Lacalle, J., Pina, V., & Royo, S. (2011). The unpromising quality and evolution of Spanish public hospital web sites. Online Information Review, 35(1), 86–112.García-Santiago, L., & Moya-Anegón, F. (2009). Using co-outlinks to mine heterogeneous networks. Scientometrics, 79(3), 681–702.González-Bailón, S. (2009). Opening the black box of link formation: Social factors underlying the structure of the web. Social Networks, 31(2009), 271–280.Heimeriks, G., Hörlesberger, M., & Van den Besselaar, P. (2003). Mapping communication and collaboration in heterogeneous research networks. Scientometrics, 58(2), 391–413.Heimeriks, G., & Van den Besselaar, P. (2006). Analyzing hyperlinks networks: The meaning of hyperlink based indicators of knowledge production. Cybermetrics, 10(1), http://cybermetrics.cindoc.csic.es/articles/v10i1p1.pdf . Accessed 16 August 2015.Holmberg, K. (2010). Co-inlinking to a municipal Web space: A webometric and content analysis. Scientometrics, 83(3), 851–862.Holmberg, K., & Thelwall, M. (2009). Local government web sites in Finland: A geographic and webometric analysis. Scientometrics, 79(1), 157–169.Khan, G. F., & Park, H. W. (2011). Measuring the triple helix on the web: Longitudinal trends in the university-industry-government relationship in Korea. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(12), 2443–2455.Lang, P. B., Gouveia, F. C., & Leta, J. (2014). Health research networks on the web: An analysis of the Brazilian presence. Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 30(2), 369–378.Leydesdorff, L., & Curran, M. (2000). Mapping university-industry-government relations on the Internet: The construction of indicators for a knowledge-based economy. Cybermetrics, 4(1). http://www.cybermetrics.info/articles/v4i1p2.pdf . Accessed 16 August 2015.Méndez-Vásquez, R. I., Suñen-Pinyol, E., Cervelló, R., & Camí, J. (2008). Mapa bibliométrico de España 1996–2004: Biomedicina y ciencias de la salud. Medicina clínica, 130(7), 246–253.Méndez-Vásquez, R. I., Suñén-Pinyol, E., & Rovira, L. (2012). Caracterización bibliométrica de la investigación biomédica española, WOS 1997–2011. http://bac.fundaciorecerca.cat/mb11 . Accessed 16 August 2015.Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad. (2012). Sistema Nacional de Salud. España 2012. http://www.msssi.gob.es/organizacion/sns/docs/sns2012/SNS012__Espanol.pdf . Accessed 16 August 2015.Orduna-Malea, E., Ortega, J. L., & Aguillo, I. F. (2014). Influence of language and file type on the web visibility of top European universities. Aslib Proceedings, 66(1), 96–116.Orduna-Malea, E., & Aguillo, I. F. (2014). Cibermetría. Midiendo el espacio red. Barcelona: UOC Publishing.Orduna-Malea, E., & Aytac, S. (2015). Revealing the online network between university and industry: The case of Turkey. Scientometrics, 105(3), 1849–1866.Orduna-Malea, E., Delgado López-Cózar, E., Serrano-Cobos, J., & Romero, N. L. (2015a). Disclosing the network structure of private companies on the web: The case of Spanish IBEX 35 share index. Online Information Review, 39(3), 360–382.Orduna-Malea, E., & Ontalba-Ruipérez, J. A. (2013). Proposal for a multilevel university cybermetric analysis model. Scientometrics, 95(3), 863–884.Orduna-Malea, E., Torres-Salinas, D., & Delgado López-Cózar, E. (2015b). Hyperlinks embedded in twitter as a proxy for total external in-links to international university websites. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(7), 1447–1462.Ortega, J. L. (2007). Visualización de la Web universitaria Europea: análisis cuantitativo de enlaces a través de técnicas cibermétricas. Madrid: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.Ortega, J. L., & Aguillo, I. F. (2009). Mapping world-class universities on the web. Information Processing and Management, 45(2), 272–279.Ortega, J. L., Orduna-Malea, E., & Aguillo, I. F. (2014). Are web mentions accurate substitutes for inlinks for Spanish universities? Online Information Review, 38(1), 59–77.Park, H. W. (2011). How do social scientists use link data from search engines to understand Internet-based political and electoral communication? Quality and Quantity, 46(2), 679–693.Park, H. W., & Thelwall, M. (2003). Hyperlink analyses of the World Wide Web: A review. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2003.tb00223.x .Romero-Frías, E., & Vaughan, L. (2010a). Patterns of web linking to heterogeneous groups of companies: The case of stock exchange indexes. Aslib Proceedings, 62(2), 144–164.Romero-Frías, E., & Vaughan, L. (2010b). European political trends viewed through patterns of Web linking. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(10), 2109–2121.Seeber, M., Lepori, B., Lomi, A., Aguillo, I. F., & Barberio, V. (2012). Factors affecting web links between European higher education institutions. Journal of Informetrics, 6(3), 435–447.Stuart, D., & Thelwall, M. (2006). Investigating triple helix relationships using URL citations: A case study of the UK West Midlands automobile industry. Research Evaluation, 15(2), 97–106.Sud, P., & Thelwall, M. (2014). Linked title mentions: A new automated link search candidate. Scientometrics, 101(3), 1831–1849.Thelwall, M. (2001). Extracting macroscopic information from web links. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(13), 1157–1168.Thelwall, M. (2002). Evidence for the existence of geographic trends in university web site interlinking. Journal of Documentation, 58(5), 563–574.Thelwall, M. (2004). Link analysis: An information science approach. San Diego: Elsevier.Thelwall, M. (2006). Interpreting social science link analysis research: A theoretical framework. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(1), 60–68.Thelwall, M. (2009). Introduction to webometrics: Quantitative web research for the social sciences. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers.Thelwall, M., & Sud, P. (2011). A comparison of methods for collecting web citation data for academic organisations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(8), 1488–1497.Thelwall, M., & Tang, R. (2003). Disciplinary and linguistic considerations for academic web linking: An exploratory hyperlink mediated study with Mainland China and Taiwan. Scientometrics, 58(1), 155–181.Thelwall, M., Tang, R., & Price, L. (2003). 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

A Relational Hyperlink Analysis of an Online Social Movement

In this paper we propose relational hyperlink analysis (RHA) as a distinct approach for empirical social science research into hyperlink networks on the World Wide Web. We demonstrate this approach, which employs the ideas and techniques of social network analysis (in particular, exponential random graph modeling), in a study of the hyperlinking behaviors of Australian asylum advocacy groups. We show that compared with the commonly-used hyperlink counts regression approach, relational hyperlink analysis can lead to fundamentally different conclusions about the social processes underpinning hyperlinking behavior. In particular, in trying to understand why social ties are formed, counts regressions may over-estimate the role of actor attributes in the formation of hyperlinks when endogenous, purely structural network effects are not taken into account. Our analysis involves an innovative joint use of two software programs: VOSON, for the automated retrieval and processing of considerable quantities of hyperlink data, and LPNet, for the statistical modeling of social network data. Together, VOSON and LPNet enable new and unique research into social networks in the online world, and our paper highlights the importance of complementary research tools for social science research into the web

Open Content in Open Context

This article presents the challenges and rewards of sharing research content through a discussion of Open Context, a new open access data publication system for field sciences and museum collections. Open Context is the first data repository of its kind, allowing self-publication of research data, community commentary through tagging, and clear citation and stable hyperlinks, and Creative Commons licenses that make reusing content legal and easy.The Nov-Dec 2007 issue of Educational Technology magazine is an entire special issue dedicated to "Opening Educational Resources." A series of articles in this issue highlight open educational models, including OpenCourseWare, Connexions and this piece on Open Context, co-authored by Sarah Whitcher Kansa and Eric Kansa

The Material Traces of Journalism

This paper explores how the study of objects of journalism, retraced through the material traces left in metajournalistic discourses, might constitute a robust basis to investigate change and permanence in contemporary journalism. We delineate a research program focusing on materiality that requires foremost that objects should not be taken for granted and, therefore, that each object’s social history be minutely retraced. Stemming from two specific objects (the blog and the hyperlink), the paper argues that beyond their idiosyncrasies, both follow a similar rationale that could be extrapolated to other objects and lead to a materially focused social history of journalism in a digital age. The paper first clarifies how we approached the notion of “objects of journalism” and which objects we chose to study. Then, we show how different theoretical frameworks led us to adopt a similar research stance and a shared hypothetico-inductive path: determining how objects are parts of a series and analyzing metajournalistic discourses to retrace each object’s history on an empirically grounded basis. The resulting attention to filiations and context ultimately produces a contextualized socio-history of object

Hyperlink network analysis of a tourism destination

Hyperlinks critically impact the online visibility of a tourism destination and the effectiveness of information flow between tourism organizations and enterprises on the Internet. This study investigates the hyperlink network of the tourism industry in Western Australia. Network analysis is applied to explore, analyze, and visualize this network of 1,515 tourism websites. Several dimensions of network structure are examined, and the results indicate that the hyperlink network of this destination has a very sparse, centralized and hierarchical structure, and that the websites tend to form communities based on their geographical locations. Public tourism organizations and information services play a central and significant role in the destination network. The key implication for organizations and the industry as a whole is that education about the instrumental importance of hyperlinks could increase interconnectivity and therefore industry performance