Webometrics: A Quick Introduction

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Webometrics A Quick Introduction
Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS)
Information Studies

• Prof. Mike Thelwall
• Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group,
  University of Wolverhampton

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Overview

• What is Webometrics?
• Gathering, processing and analysing large scale
  data from the web (web pages, hyperlinks, blogs,
  Web 2.0) for many purposes that include online
  communication, although primarily for scientific
  communication
• What can Webometrics offer other researchers?
• Software to gather data from web sites, search
  engines, social network sites and blogs methods
  to extract useful patterns
• Collaboration with other social scientists on
  their problems (e.g., jokes, UN initiatives,
  research dissemination, politics, media)

http//cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk
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Example Identifying and tracking public science
concerns in blogs

• Over 100,000 Blogs and other sources tracked
  daily via RSS feeds
• Objective to identify and track public concerns
  about science
• E.g., Schiavo identified and tracked as
  potential public science concern

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Example Analysis of the accuracy of search
engine results
Live Search results analysis
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Example Hyperlinks to UK universities correlate
strongly with their research productivity
The reason for the strong correlation is the
quantity of Web publication, not its
quality This is different to citation analysis
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Example The online impact of research groups
(NetReAct)
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Austria
Geopolitical connected
Switzerland
Example Links between EU universities
Belgium
Germany
France
Spain
NL
UK
Norway
Italy
Poland
Finland
Sweden
Normalised linking, smallest countries removed
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Example Blog searching
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Example Link associations between social
networking sites