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 An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

and research

institution An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain social behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and ...

s on the Web and to promote the open access publication of scientific results. 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 A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

worldwide. The Webometrics Ranking of Business Schools is a similar ranking of the world's Business Schools.

Objectives

The Webometrics University Ranking is a ranking system based on university web presence, visibility and web access. 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. 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. 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.

Impact

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

, 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. 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 The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

. The Webmometrics data were referred to as a reference point to achieve better online visibility and performance of higher education institutions.

Structure and contents

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: *USA & Canada *Europe, including Turkey, Caucasus & Israel **Central & Eastern Europe *Asia, excluding the Middle East **South East Asia **South Asia, Indian Subcontinent *Arab & Persian World (North Africa & Middle East) *Africa *Latin America: Central, South America & Caribbean *Oceania

Authorship

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.

Notes and references

* ''Rankings b
Webometrics
in this article are license
CC-BY 2.5
which permits reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. All relevant terms must be followed.''

External links

* {{University ranking systems University and college rankings