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The Cybermetrics Lab is a research group of the
Spanish National Research Council
The Spanish National Research Council ( es, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC) is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe. Its main objective is to develop and promote res ...
(CSIC). The organization is responsible for editing the
Webometrics Ranking of World Universities 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 page ...
. 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.
The Cybermetrics Lab started to design and compile web indicators in the mid 1990s, editing the first CSIC electronic journal, ''Cybermetrics'', in 1996. Originally part of the National Documentation Center (IEDCYT, now extinct), the group is now located in the new facilities of the CSIC for the Humanities and Social Sciences in Madrid. The head of the group i Isidro F. Aguillo
Major contributions of the group include the analysis of academic world and regional webpages, the discovery of a
digital divide
The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age i ...
between North American and European top universities, and the development of new statistics for
Open Access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre o ...
Universities
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...