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 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) located in Madrid. The aim of the Ranking is to improve the presence of the academic and research

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

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 institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United State ...

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 in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

, 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 ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

and

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

. 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

(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