The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, also known as Ranking Web of Universities, is a ranking system for the world's universities based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the Web content (number of web pages and files) and the visibility and impact of these web publications according to the number of external inlinks (site citations) they received. The ranking is published by the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group of the Spanish National Research Council located in Madrid.
The aim of the ranking is to improve the presence of the academic and research institutions on the Web and to promote the open access publication of scientific results. [1] The ranking started in 2004 and is updated every January and July. As of 2021 it provides Web indicators for more than 31,000 universities worldwide. [2]
The Webometrics Ranking of Business Schools is a similar ranking of the world's Business Schools.
The Webometrics University Ranking is a ranking system based on university web presence, visibility and web access. [3] This ranking system measures how strongly a university is present in the web by its own web domain, sub-pages, rich files, scholarly articles etc. [3] The central hypothesis of this approach is that web presence is a reliable indicator of the global performance and prestige of the universities and as such, is an indirect way to measure all the university missions (teaching, research, transfer). Although the Web is universally recognized as one of the most relevant tools for scholarly communication, it is still very rare these indicators are used for the evaluation of the scientific research and the academic performance of universities. Webometric indicators are provided to show the commitment of the institutions to Web publication.
A research paper in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Scientometrics found "reasonable similarities" between the Webometrics rankings and other prominent university rankings despite using a very different set of features to determine each university's rank. These similarities were increased when the comparison was limited solely to European universities. [4]
Top universities are publishing millions of pages produced by dozens of departments and services, hundreds of research teams and thousands of scholars. Strong web presence informs of a wide variety of factors that are clearly correlated with the global quality of the institution: widespread availability of computer resources available, global internet literacy, policies promoting democracy and freedom of speech, competition for international visibility or support of open access initiatives, among others.
In Namibia, the Webometrics list is frequently used in public interaction, particularly with respect to the country's two main state-funded institutions of tertiary education, the University of Namibia and the Polytechnic of Namibia. [5] [6]
The 2009–2011 rankings have received significant press coverage and individual rankings have been published on the websites of universities in countries in the Middle East, [7] East Asia, [8] [9] Europe, [10] Canada [11] and Africa. [12]
The Webmometrics data were referred to as a reference point to achieve better online visibility and performance of higher education institutions. [13] [14]
There are pages for several regional Rankings:
- Universities. The main worldwide list of 30000 universities build from a catalog of various institutions is also offered as regional lists:
The Webometrics Ranking is produced by the Cybermetrics Lab, a unit of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the main public research body in Spain. The Lab acts as an Observatory of the Science and Technology on the Web. Isidro F. Aguillo is the head of the Laboratory and the editor-in-chief of the Rankings.
College and university rankings order institutions in higher education based on factors that vary depending on the ranking. Some rankings evaluate institutions within a single country, while others assess institutions worldwide. Rankings are typically conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academics. In addition to ranking entire institutions, specific programs, departments, and schools can be ranked. Some rankings consider measures of wealth, excellence in research, selective admissions, and alumni success. Rankings may also consider various combinations of measures of specialization expertise, student options, award numbers, internationalization, graduate employment, industrial linkage, historical reputation and other criteria.
The science of webometrics tries to measure the World Wide Web to get knowledge about the number and types of hyperlinks, structure of the World Wide Web and using patterns. According to Björneborn and Ingwersen, the definition of webometrics is "the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the Web drawing on bibliometric and informetric approaches." The term webometrics was first coined by Almind and Ingwersen (1997). A second definition of webometrics has also been introduced, "the study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals using techniques that are not specific to one field of study", which emphasizes the development of applied methods for use in the wider social sciences. The purpose of this alternative definition was to help publicize appropriate methods outside the information-science discipline rather than to replace the original definition within information science.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003, making it the first global university ranking with multifarious indicators.
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a repository for preprints devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, and health sciences, among others. Elsevier bought SSRN from Social Science Electronic Publishing Inc. in May 2016. It is not an electronic journal, but rather an eLibrary and search engine.
Informetrics is the study of quantitative aspects of information, it is an extension and evolution of traditional bibliometrics and scientometrics. Informetrics uses bibliometrics and scientometrics methods to study mainly the problems of literature information management and evaluation of science and technology. Informetrics is an independent discipline that uses quantitative methods from mathematics and statistics to study the process, phenomena, and law of informetrics. Informetrics has gained more attention as it is a common scientific method for academic evaluation, research hotspots in discipline, and trend analysis.
The University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) is a public university located in Ubungo District, Dar es Salaam Region, Tanzania. It was established in 1961 as an affiliate college of the University of London. The university became an affiliate of the University of East Africa (UEA) in 1963, shortly after Tanzania gained its independence from the United Kingdom. In 1970, UEA split into three independent universities: Makerere University in Uganda, the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
ITMO University is a state-supported university in Saint Petersburg and is one of Russia's National Research Universities. ITMO University is one of 15 Russian universities that were selected to participate in Russian Academic Excellence Project 5-100 by the government of the Russian Federation to improve their international standing among the world's research and educational centers.
The Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), formerly known as Polytechnic of Namibia, is a public university located in the city of Windhoek, Namibia. Andrew Niikondo is its acting vice-chancellor. NUST was headed by the founding vice-chancellor Tjama Tjivikua until March 2019. After two acting appointments, Erold Naomab was appointed vice-chancellor in January 2021. The largely ceremonial role of chancellor of the university is held by Peter Katjavivi.
Science and technology in Wallonia, the southern region of Belgium (Europe), is well developed with the presence of several universities and research institutes.
QS World University Rankings is a portfolio of comparative university rankings compiled by global higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with Times Higher Education (THE) magazine as Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings, inaugurated in 2004 to provide an independent source of comparative data about university performance. In 2009, the two organizations parted ways to produce independent university rankings, the QS World University Rankings and THE World University Rankings.
The Cybermetrics Lab is a research group of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The organization is responsible for editing the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. Currently more than 48,000 web domains of academic and research organizations are analyzed and are ranked according to their web presence and link visibility.
Rankings of universities in Canada are typically published annually by a variety of nationally, and internationally based publications. Rankings of post-secondary institutions have most often been conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academia. Ranking are established to help inform potential applicants about universities in Canada based on a range of criteria, including student body characteristics, classes, faculty, finances, library, and reputation. Various rankings consider combinations of factors, including funding and endowment, research excellence and/or influence, specialization expertise, admissions, student options, award numbers, internationalization, graduate employment, industrial linkage, historical reputation and other criteria. Various rankings also evaluate universities based on research output.
Miguel de Cervantes University is a private university located in Santiago de Chile and was established on 1996. This university had around 853 students in 2010. It is accredited by Chile's National Accreditation Commission (CNA-Chile).
The CWTS Leiden Ranking is an annual global university ranking based exclusively on bibliometric indicators. The rankings are compiled by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. The Clarivate Analytics bibliographic database Web of Science is used as the source of the publication and citation data.
The University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) is a university ranking developed by the Informatics Institute of Middle East Technical University. Since 2010, it has been publishing annual national and global college and university rankings for top 2000 institutions. The scientometrics measurement of URAP is based on data obtained from the Institute for Scientific Information via Web of Science and inCites. For global rankings, URAP employs indicators of research performance including the number of articles, citation, total documents, article impact total, citation impact total, and international collaboration. In addition to global rankings, URAP publishes regional rankings for universities in Turkey using additional indicators such as the number of students and faculty members obtained from Center of Measuring, Selection and Placement ÖSYM.
Universities in Malaysia are ranked in a number of ways, including both national and international ranks.
This article presents an overview of university rankings in Pakistan. Within Pakistan, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) provides official rankings of higher education institutions (HEIs) nationally, based on a multitude of criteria. There are also various magazines, newspapers and international agencies/standards which provide rankings and analysis.
There are a number of approaches to ranking academic publishing groups and publishers. Rankings rely on subjective impressions by the scholarly community, on analyses of prize winners of scientific associations, discipline, a publisher's reputation, and its impact factor.
The Webometrics Ranking of Business Schools, also known as Ranking Web of Business Schools, is a ranking system for the world's business schools based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the Web content and the visibility and impact of these web publications according to the number of external inlinks they received. The ranking is published by the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) located in Madrid.
IMT Atlantique Bretagne Pays de la Loire is a technological university, which was created on January 1, 2017 through the merger of the École nationale supérieure des mines de Nantes and Télécom Bretagne. The engineering school is part of the Grandes Écoles, a prestigious group of French institutions dedicated to engineering, scientific research, and business education. It consists of three campuses: Brest, Nantes, Rennes. IMT Atlantique is a school of the Institut Mines-Télécom and a member of the Université Bretagne Loire.
