1. Webometrics:
Through the eyes of Mike Thelwall
About the author [8], Professor, University of Wolverhampton
 PhD degree in Mathematics
 Research in quantitative methods to analyze web.
 Well-known webometrics researcher
 Influenced by: Arasu, Berners-Lee, Bjorneborn,
Cronin, Kling, Lawrence, Spink, Vaughan.
INTRODUCTORY FACTS!!!
Tomas C. Almind and Peter
Ingwersen coined this term in 1997.
Webometrics involves the quantitative
studies of web phenomenon. [4]
Mike Thelwall leads the Statistical
Cybermetrics Research Group.
SEARCH ENGINE EVALUATION
LINK ANALYSIS
QUANTITATIVE
METHODS FOR
SOCIAL RESEARCH
WEB CITATION
AND TEXT
ANALYSIS
WEB 2.0
COMPUTER
ASSISTED
ASSESSME
NT
070201009998 0603 04 05
SEARCH ENGINE EVALUATION
LINK ANALYSIS
QUANTITATIVE
METHODS FOR
SOCIAL RESEARCH
WEB CITATION
AND TEXT
ANALYSIS
WEB 2.0
COMPUTER
ASSISTED
ASSESSME
NT
070201009998 0603 04 05
Research
dissemination…
The connection...
Can personal web ...
Webometrics...
Webometrics
Interpreting social
...
Bibliometrics...
EXPLORING
WEB’S POTENTIAL
TRYING SOME
METHODS
GIVING SOME SHAPE
TO THE FIELD
RETROSPECTION
& PREDICTION

2. Web: an Opportunity;
Bibliometrics: an Inspiration
The opportunity:
 New medium for dissemination and
promoting scholarly research. [1]
 Conversion of entire publishing cycle
to the Internet.
 Broad range of research artifacts
(presentations, patents, web sites).[7]
The inspiration:
 Hyperlinks can be seen as citations. [5]
Comparing with ISI database:
 Web is timelier and can help start
writing about the project without
waiting till the work gets published[7].
 Web is free to access whereas not
everyone can afford access to ISI[7].
Interesting results:
 Online papers cited more than
their offline counterpartsLawrence cited
in [1].
 For a discipline-specific set of
journals indexed by ISI, a
significant correlation between the
inlink counts and ISI’s impact
factorVaughen and Hysen (2002) cited in [5].
Author’s conclusion:
 Cannot replace Bibliometrics.
 Reveal different aspects of
scholarly impact [1].
 Reveal new facets of public
attitudes to academic research[2].
QUICK AID!
Co-inlinks =co-citations
Co-outlinks =bibliographic
coupling[5].
Webometrics is a subset of
Bibliometrics

3. Towards a theory for
webometrics
Call for conceptualization
 Bates (2007) places this field at the
right side of the spectrum and
presents it as a science of
information evolving from
mathematics.
Call for formalizing
 Web node diagramBjorneborn and
Ingwersen, in press cited in [5].
 Document models- Top-level
domain, site, directory, page [5].
Information
Science
Computer
Science
Statistical
Physics
Communic
ation
Studies
A
C
B E
G
D F
H I
Definition Bjorneborn & Ingwersen, in press[5] :
“Webometrics is the study of quantitative
aspects of the construction and use of
information resources, structures and
technologies on the Web.”
Terminology [5] :
 Inlink, Outlink, reciprocally linked,
transversal outlink, isolated, co-outlink, co-
inlink
.
CAN YOU
SOLVE THIS?

4. Digging into the details
The Methodology
Units of analysis: links and server log files
Indicators
 Web impact factor (Informal
communication. [5])
 Inlinks, Outlinks, Contents (impact,
trust, visibility, topic similarity [3].)
 Avg web page size, avg use of
technologies (describing the web [7] ).
Data Collection[6]: Crawlers, Search
engines, Browsing
Methods [5]
 Web content analysis
 Web link analysis
 Web usage analysis
 Web technology analysis.
 Web citation analysis [7]
Author’s finding on Link Analysis &
Academic Websites
 Links b/w universities correlate significantly
with their research productivity [1] .
 To find the relationship between inlink
counts and the research of host university, it
is appropriate to classify the pages and use
directory model [2] .
 Hyperlinks are rarely used for evaluation
because of the variety of link creation
reasons[6].
 Promotion, funding and tenure decisions,
university health checks, proximity measures,
international info flows, evolution of research
groups. [7][5]
Other Applications of Webometrics
 Web mining, web topology, web clustering [6]
 Analysis of page and search result changes. [7]
 Analysis of Web 2.0 phenomenon
WORDS OF CAUTION!
Research Productivity is different
from web visibility
QUICK FACT!
Search engines have broader coverage
than web crawlers

5. Evaluation and Prediction
Challenges
 Web: Diversity, size, incompleteness,
looseness and lack of quality control. [3]
 Hyperlinks: Limited extent to which
useful information about scholarly
communication can be extracted [4] .
 Technology: Difficulties in identifying
web pages, because of HTML itself [5] .
 Concept of document: A page may
have multiple docs; & many pages may
be used for a single doc.
Future Implications [6]
General
 Longitudinal approaches to cope up
with the changing nature of the Web.
 More work on analyses of Web 2.0 and
online repositories.
Link Analysis Related
 Theory of linking
 Framework for interpreting results
 Triangulation methods (classification
of pages and links and correlation tests)
for interpretation.
 Web interface for testing interlinking
hypothesis.
 Link analysis can be used for fast pilot
studies to identify areas for follow-up
bibliometric analyses.
Why read Mike Thelwall[9]
 Total number of publications: 102
 Citations received: 799
 h-index: 16
FUN FACT!
Cybermetrics Lab, CSIS,
provides webometrics
ranking of world
universities [10] .

6. References
1. Thelwall, M. (2002). Research dissemination and invocation on the web. Online Information Review,
26(6), 413-420. 2.
2. Thelwall, M., & Harries, G. (2003). The connection between the research of a university and counts
of links to its web pages: An investigation based upon a classification of the relationships of pages
to the research of the host university. Journal of the American Society for Information Science &
Technology, 54(7), 594-602.
3. Thelwall, M., & Harries, G. (2004a). Can personal web pages that link to universities yield
information about the wider dissemination of research? Journal of Information Science, 30(3), 240-253.
4. Thelwall, M., & Vaughan, L. (2004b). Webometrics: An introduction to the special issue. Journal of
the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 55(14), 1213-1215.
5. Thelwall, M., Vaughan, L., & Bjorneborn, L. (2005). Webometrics. Annual Review of Information
Science & Technology, 39, 81-135.
6. Thelwall, M. (2006). Interpreting social science link analysis research: A theoretical framework.
Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 57(1), 60-68.
7. Thelwall, M. (2008). Bibliometrics to webometrics. Journal of Information Science, 34(4)
8. http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/mycv.html
9. Web of science Database
10. http://www.webometrics.info/
11. Bates, Marcia. 2007. Defining the information disciplines in encyclopedia development.
Information Research 12(4). Accessed at: http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis29.html