Ranking Web (Webometrics) of Universities
Yves Gingras
gingras.yves at UQAM.CA
Fri Aug 31 12:22:19 EDT 2012
The vagueness of the indicator is here componded by the arbitrary
ponderation: why 50%? Why not 10% for links and 80% for citations? This just
confirms that a composite indicator of heterogeneous measures has no
definite meaning. Also: is being ³linked to² or being ³visited by² many
people really measuring something definite? It seems here that numbers are
used because they are available even though nobody knows what they mean
exactly. We should strive to build indicators the meaning of which we
control to make sure we can then understand they variation over time: we
know a thermometer measures temperature and not humidity (for which we need
a hygrometer) but if we we add (or multiply) one with the other we any
precise informatino on temperature...
Best regards
Yves Gingras
Le 31/08/12 11:39, « Isidro F. Aguillo » <isidro.aguillo at CCHS.CSIC.ES> a
écrit :
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> Dear Loet:
>
> Not sure. My first candidate is the number of webeditors and the university
> policies about contributors. 1000s scholars building rich personal pages are
> far more effective than a well paid webmaster.
>
> Also, do not forget that web publications is only 50% of the total. The other
> 50% is impact or link visibility, ie the number of inlinks you received that
> in the case of top universities means thousands of people linking ("citing" a
> webpage) to the university webdomain.
>
> Best,
>
>
> El 31/08/2012 16:32, Loet Leydesdorff escribió:
>
>
>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html Re: [SIGMETRICS] Ranking Web
>> (Webometrics) of Universities
>>
>>
>> Dear Isidro,
>>
>>
>>
>> Yet, the web-ranks may (partially) correlate with the budgets of the
>> webmasters. J
>>
>> Could you test this?
>>
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Loet
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
>> [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Isidro F. Aguillo
>> Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 4:29 PM
>> To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
>> Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Ranking Web (Webometrics) of Universities
>>
>>
>>
>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>> <http://web.utk.edu/%7Egwhitney/sigmetrics.html>
>>
>> Dear Yves:
>>
>> There is no a single answer, but many possible candidate answers:
>>
>> - Scientific discoveries should be communicated, preferably not only to the
>> scientists working at rich western organizations. Today Web is the most
>> universal and cheaper scholarly communication tool. Ranking MEASURES the
>> amount of new knowledge generated and how much is published in an open
>> format.
>>
>> - Most of the scientists are not only producing papers in formal
>> international journals, but their activities are richer and diverse. Ranking
>> MEASURES all the outputs, formal and informal, if they publish them on the
>> Web.
>>
>> - Universities (specially public ones) are investing a lot, not only in
>> research, but in other different missions. For example promoting distance
>> learning (through web platforms), supplying information about their
>> governance (transparency), attracting talented students and prestigious
>> professors through internationalization of their web contents, supplying
>> information of their technological developments in their specialized web
>> portals and so on. Ranking MEASURES all these different activities if they
>> are making public in the Web.
>>
>> These are only a few examples.
>>
>> El 31/08/2012 15:55, Yves Gingras escribió:
>>
>>>
>>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>> <http://web.utk.edu/%7Egwhitney/sigmetrics.html> These results show that
>>> the ³indicator² is dubious and does not really indicate anything specific...
>>> Instead of writing that the use of web domains is ³penalizing their
>>> position in the Ranking², one should instead conclude that using web domains
>>> to ³rank² institutions is dubious since it misrepresent the reality: should
>>> institutions adapt to indicators OR should indicators be adapted to the
>>> reality of institutions???... Before multiplying ³indicators² maybe one
>>> should first ask the basic question: ³what on earth does this thing really
>>> MEASURE?²
>>>
>>>
>>> Yves Gingras
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Le 31/08/12 05:02, « Isidro F. Aguillo » <isidro.aguillo at CCHS.CSIC.ES>
>>> <mailto:isidro.aguillo at CCHS.CSIC.ES> a écrit :
>>>
>>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>> <http://web.utk.edu/%7Egwhitney/sigmetrics.html>
>>> El 31/08/2012 10:31, Clement Levallois escribió:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>> <http://web.utk.edu/%7Egwhitney/sigmetrics.html>
>>>
>>> Interesting!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In the ranking for Europe, not a single French university in the 100 first?
>>> Wow.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> (see here: http://www.webometrics.info/en/Ranking_Europe/European_Union)
>>> <http://www.webometrics.info/en/Ranking_Europe/European_Union%29>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Clement
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Clement Levallois, PhD
>>> Erasmus University Rotterdam
>>> The Netherlands
>>>
>>> pro website
>>> <http://www.erim.eur.nl/ERIM/People/Person_Details?p_aff_id=4321> /
>>> personal website <http://www.clementlevallois.net/>
>>>
>>>
>>> twitter and skype: @seinecle
>>>
>>> Discover the NESSHI project: http://www.nesshi.eu <http://www.nesshi.eu/>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear all:
>>>
>>> You can check the Excellence indicator (papers in the 10% top cited) that
>>> Paris 6 is 28th and Paris XI is 98th so the reasons for the delayed ranks
>>> are related to the web presence. Language is an important issue as
>>> English-speaking countries are clearly over-represented but it is not the
>>> only reason. Perhaps interesting to this list is that the commitment to open
>>> access is limited. You can check the performance of the French university
>>> repositories here:
>>>
>>> http://repositories.webometrics.info/en/Europe/France
>>>
>>> It is very surprising that in some cases they have surrendered their own
>>> web domains in their "institutional" repositories. A few examples:
>>>
>>> École Polytechnique http://hal-polytechnique.archives-ouvertes.fr/
>>> Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
>>> http://hal-paris1.archives-ouvertes.fr/
>>> École Mines ParisTech http://hal-ensmp.archives-ouvertes.fr/
>>> Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis
>>> http://hal-unice.archives-ouvertes.fr/
>>>
>>> Of course this practice is penalizing their position in the Ranking.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yves Gingras
>>>
>>> Professeur
>>> Département d'histoire
>>> Centre interuniversitaire de recherche
>>> sur la science et la technologie (CIRST)
>>> Chaire de recherche du Canada en histoire
>>> et sociologie des sciences
>>> Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST)
>>> UQAM
>>> C.P. 8888, Succ. Centre-Ville
>>> Montréal, Québec
>>> Canada, H3C 3P8
>>>
>>> Tel: (514)-987-3000-7053
>>> Fax: (514)-987-7726
>>>
>>> http://www.chss.uqam.ca
>>> http://www.cirst.uqam.ca
>>> http://www.ost.uqam.ca
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
Yves Gingras
Professeur
Département d'histoire
Centre interuniversitaire de recherche
sur la science et la technologie (CIRST)
Chaire de recherche du Canada en histoire
et sociologie des sciences
Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST)
UQAM
C.P. 8888, Succ. Centre-Ville
Montréal, Québec
Canada, H3C 3P8
Tel: (514)-987-3000-7053
Fax: (514)-987-7726
http://www.chss.uqam.ca
http://www.cirst.uqam.ca
http://www.ost.uqam.ca
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20120831/d901ed78/attachment.html>
More information about the SIGMETRICS
mailing list