[Eurchap] *AoIR Workshop* Webometrics and academic scholarship

[Thelwall, Mike (Dr)]

This email is to briefly introduce the field of Webometrics to those who are
not familiar with it.
Webometrics uses quantitative techniques inspired by Information Science to
measure aspects of the web. It has been commonly concerned with developing
and assessing methods for counting links between web sites. One finding is
the result that, when counted appropriately, the number of links pointing to
a university web site is proportional to the university's research
productivity. Another finding is that linking between universities is
greatly affected by geography, even within a single country, and language.
I see the potential contribution of Webometrics (and link analysis in
particular) to science studies as (a) providing empirical data to assess
hypothesised communication trends and (b) identifying patterns in the web
for subsequent more qualitative analyses. For me, a combination of
qualitative and qualitative approaches is essential to both of these.
Neither qualitative nor quantitative techniques can provide the answers on
their own. 

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Mike Thelwall
Head, Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group
School of Computing and IT, Wolverhampton University, UK.
http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/mycv.html
http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk