Web presence and visibility of Spanish public universities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2010.2.740Keywords:
Spanish public universities, academic web domains, web size, web visibility, Spain, University rankingAbstract
The evolution of size and visibility of the Spanish public universities websites according to various search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Live/Bing y Exalead) was studied from January to June 2009. Additionally, the article proposes two indicators for understanding the importance of a web domain: the Relative representativeness size factor (Rs) and the Relative representativeness visibility factor (Rv). These indicators, which consider the number of both documents and links, respectively, during a specific interval of time are intended to be applied in the design and construction of university rankings based on cybermetric techniques. The results confirm that the size differences among academic web domains vary significantly depending on the search engine used; therefore the use of a single web browser cannot supply reliable information about the actual size of the web domain. Moreover, the use of combined values from the mean obtained from each search engine does not offer reliable results, given the variance of data obtained from the different search engines, as well as the index differences of Rs. The differences concerning visibility were smaller, but significant nonetheless. Rs and Rv indicators were found to provide useful and consistent information about the level of development of universities on the Web during a given time interval. There was also a positive correlation between these two indicators on both Yahoo! and Exalead, confirming the relationship between the number of documents of an academic web domain and the number of links it receives over time.
Downloads
References
Aguillo, I. F., y Granadino, B. (2006): Indicadores web para medir la presencia de las universidades en la red. Revista de universidad y sociedad del conocimiento, vol. 3 (1), 68-75.
Aguillo, I. F.; Granadino, B.; Ortega, J. L, y Prieto, J. A. (2006): Scientific research activity and Communications measured with cybermetrics indicators. Journal of the American Society for information science and technology, vol. 57 (10), 1296-1302. doi:10.1002/asi.20433
Aguillo, I. F.; Ortega, J. L., y Fernández, M. (2008): Webometric Ranking of World Universities: introduction, methodology, and future developments. Higher education in Europe, vol. 33 (2/3), 233-244. doi:10.1080/03797720802254031
Altbach, P.G. (2006): GATS Redux: The WTO and Higher Education Returns to Center Stage. En Altbach, Philip G. (ed.), International Higher education: reflexions on Policy and Practice. Center for International Higher Education, Boston, EE.UU.
Bar-Ilan, J. (1999), Search engine results over time – A case study on search engine stability, Cybermetrics, 2/3. Available: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v2i1p1.html.
Bar-Ilan, J. (2002): Methods for measuring search engine performance over time, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53 (4): 308-319. doi:10.1002/asi.10047
Bar-Ilan, J. (2003): The use of web search engines in information science research. Annual review of information science and technology, vol. 38, 231-288. doi:10.1002/aris.1440380106
Bar-Ilan, J., y Peritz, B. C. (2004): Evolution, continuity, and disappearance of documents on a specifi c topic on the Web: A longitudinal study of informetrics. Jasist, vol. 55(11), 980-990. doi:10.1002/asi.20049
Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions (2006): Institute for Higher Education Institut (IHEP). http://www.ihep.org/assets/files/publications/a-f/BerlinPrinciplesRanking.pdf [consulta 20-10-2009].
Brewington, B. E., y Cybenko, G. (2000): How dynamic is the Web? Computer Networks, vol. 33 (1-6), 257-276.
Cho, Y., y García-Molina, H. (2000): The evolution of the web and implications for an incremental crawler. Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, 200-209.
Fetterly, D.; Manasse, M.; Najork, M., y Wiener, J. (2003): A large scale study of the evolution of web pages, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on World Wide Web, 669-678.
Hazelkorn, E. (2007): The impact of league tables and ranking systems on Higher Education decision making. Higher education management and policy, vol. 19 (2).
Ingwersen, P. (1998): The calculation of web impact factors. Journal of Documentation, vol. 54(2), 236-243. doi:10.1108/EUM0000000007167
Koehler, W. (1999): An analysis of web page and web site constancy and permanence, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol. 50 (2), 162-180. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:2<162::AID-ASI7>3.0.CO;2-B
Koehler, W. (2002): Web page change and persistence -4- year longitudinal web study, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 53 (2), 162-171. doi:10.1002/asi.10018
Koehler, W. (2004): A longitudinal study of Web pages continued a consideration of document persistence, Information Research, vol. 9 (2). http://informationr.net/ir/9-2/paper174.html [consulta 20-10-2009].
Lawrence, S., y Giles L. (1999): Accesibility of information on the Web. Nature, vol. 400, 107-109. doi:10.1038/21987 PMid:10428673
Noruzi, A. (2006a): The Web Impact Factor: a critical review. The Electronic Library, vol. 24 (4), 490-500. doi:10.1108/02640470610689188
Noruzi, A. (2006b): Web presence and impact factors for Middle-Eastern countries. Online, vol. 30 (2), 22-28.
Orduña-Malea, E.; Serrano-Cobos, J., y Lloret-Romero, N. (2009): Las universidades públicas españolas en Google Scholar: presencia y evolución de su publicación académica web. El profesional de la información, vol. 18 (5), 493-500. doi:10.3145/epi.2009.sep.02
Ortega, J. L., y Aguillo, Isidro-F. (2007): La web académica española en el contexto del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior: estudio exploratorio. El profesional de la información, vol. 16 (5), 417-425. doi:10.3145/epi.2007.sep.03
Ortega, J. L.; Aguillo, I. F., y Prieto, J. A. (2006): Longitudinal study of contents and elements in the scientific Web environment. Journal of Information Science, vol. 32 (4), 344-351. doi:10.1177/0165551506065785
Payne, N., y Thelwall, M. (2007): A longitudinal study of academic webs: growth and stabilization. Scientometrics, vol. 71 (3), 523-539. doi:10.1007/s11192-007-1695-y
Rocki, M. (2005): Statistical and mathematical aspects of rankings: lessons from Poland. Higher education in Europe, v. 30 (2), 173-181. doi:10.1080/03797720500260165
Rousseau, R. (1999), Time evolution of the number of hits in keyword searches on the Internet, Post Conference Seminar – Cybermetrics’99 at the Seventh International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, July 9 1999, Colima, Mexico. Available: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/cybermetrics99.html [consulta 20-10-2009].
Smith, A., y Thelwall, M. (2004): Web impact factor for Australasian universities. Scientometrics, vol. 54 (3), 363-380. doi:10.1023/A:1016030415822
Stuart, D. (1995): Reputational rankings: background and development. New directions for institutional research, vol. 88.
Thelwall, M. (2001): Extracting macroscopic information from web links, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 52 (13), 1157-1168. doi:10.1002/asi.1182
Thelwall, M., y Aguillo, I. F. (2003): La salud de las web universitarias españolas. Revista española de documentación científi ca, vol. 26 (3), 291-305.
Usher, A., y Savino, M. (2006): A World of Difference: A Global Survey of University League Tables. Toronto, Ont; Educational Policy Institute, 63.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2010 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
© CSIC. Manuscripts published in both the print and online versions of this journal are the property of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and quoting this source is a requirement for any partial or full reproduction.
All contents of this electronic edition, except where otherwise noted, are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. You may read the basic information and the legal text of the licence. The indication of the CC BY 4.0 licence must be expressly stated in this way when necessary.
Self-archiving in repositories, personal webpages or similar, of any version other than the final version of the work produced by the publisher, is not allowed.
