Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Exploring the web visibility of world-class universities

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

With the rapid development of the Internet, there is a need for evaluating the public visibility of universities on the Internet (i.e., web visibility) in terms of its implications for university management, planning, and governance. The data were collected in December 2010 by using Yahoo, one of the most widely used search engines. Specifically, we gathered “Single Mention” data to measure the number of times that each university was mentioned on websites. In addition, we collected network-based data on Single Mentions. We obtained another data set based on the 2010 world university rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). We employed several analytical methods for the analysis, including correlations, nonparametric tests (e.g., the Mann–Whitney test), and multidimensional scaling (MDS). The significant positive correlation between university rankings and web visibility suggests that indicators of web visibility can function as a proxy measure of conventional university rankings. Another distinctive implication can be drawn from the pattern of a disparity in web visibility stemming from the linguistic divide, that is, universities in English-speaking countries dominated the central positions in various network structures of web visibility, whereas those in non-English-speaking countries were located in the periphery of these structures. In this regard, further research linking web visibility to university management, planning, and governance is needed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. This section is mostly reconstructed and rephrased in accordance with the purpose of current paper, based on Park et al. (2011).

  2. Research exploring the key features of world-class universities has identified several common criteria across different ranking tables, including academic reputation, faculty-student ratio, percentage of foreign students, entrance exam scores of accepted graduate students, and financial resources (e.g., Niland 2000; Clarke 2002; Rosso and Velasco 2006). Other ranking criteria point to faculty accomplishments, including faculty awards, honors and prizes, faculty citations in major citation indices (e.g., The Shanghai Jiao Tong University Global Ranking; Time Higher World University Ranking), and the alumni-giving rate (e.g., U.S. News & World Report Ranking).

  3. Specifically, single mentions for the top five universities were as follows: Harvard (140,000,000), U.C. Berkeley (63,600,000), Stanford (95,300,000), MIT (57,400,000), and Cambridge (161,000,000). Single mentions for the top five universities in non-English-speaking countries were as follows: Tokyo (77,200,000), Kyoto (26,900,000), Pierre and Marie Curie University-Paris 6 (678,000), Copenhagen (28,500,000), and Karolinska Institute (2,860,000).

  4. It should be noted that for some web-visibility indicators, standard deviations are higher than their means because they are extremely skewed. For this reason, we also provide means and deviations based on natural logarithm.

References

  • Barabasi, A. (2002). Linked: The new science of networks. Cambridge: Perseus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, G. A. (2001). A longitudinal analysis of the international telecommunications network: 1978–1996. American Behavioral Scientist, 44(1), 638–655.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, G. A., & Choi, Y. (1995). Physical distance and language as determinants of the international telecommunication network. International Political Science Review, 16, 249–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, G. A., Jacobson, T. L., Choi, Y., & Sun-Miller, S. L. (1996). An examination of the international telecommunication network. The Journal of International Communication, 3, 19–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, G. A., & Park, H. W. (2005). The structure of international Internet hyperlinks and bilateral bandwidth. Annales des Telecommunications, 60(11), 15–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, G. A., Salisbury, J. G. T., Kim, C., & Langhorne, A. (1999). Globalization and international communication networks: An examination of monetary, telecommunications, and trade networks. The Journal of International Communication, 6, 7–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, G. A., & Sung, E. (2006). Culture and the structure of the international hyperlink network. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), 17–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonacich, P. (1972). Factoring and weighting approaches to status scores and clique identification. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 2, 113–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, P., Lauder, H., & Ashton, D. (2011). The global auction: The broken promises of education, jobs, and incomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, C., & Grimes, P. (1995). World systems analysis. Annual Review of Sociology, 21, 387–417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choi, Y., & Ahn, M. (1996). Telecommunication, transportation and trade networks of 15 European countries. Gazette, 5, 189–204.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, M. (2002). Some guidelines for academic quality rankings. Higher Education in Europe, 27(4), 443–459.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Danowski, J. (2000). Arab countries’ global telephone traffic networks. In H. Amin & L. Gher (Eds.), Civic discourse and digital age communications in the Middle East. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grubb, N. W., & Lazerson, M. (2004). The education gospel: The economic power of schooling. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khan, G. F., & Park, H. W. (2011). Measuring the Triple Helix on the web: Longitudinal trends in the university–industry–government relationship in Korea. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, forthcoming.

  • Lee, M. (2007). Where are global leaders educated? International Higher Education, 49, 6–7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, S., Monge, P., Bar, F., & Matei, S. A. (2007). The emergence of clusters in the global telecommunications network. Journal of Communication, 57, 415–434.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, M., & Park, H. W. (2011). The linguistic divide: The web visibility of world-class universities. International Higher Education, under review. http://www.bc.edu/research/cihe/.

  • Lee, M., Thayer, T., & Madyun, N. (2008). The evolution of the European Union’s lifelong learning policies: An institutional learning perspective. Comparative Education, 44(4), 445–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levin, H. M., Jeong, D. W. & Ou, D. (2006). What is a world class university? Paper presentation at the 2006 conference of the Comparative & International Education Society, Honolulu, Hawaii, 16 March 2006.

  • Li, X., Thelwall, M., Musgrove, P., & Wilkinson, D. (2003). The relationship between the links/Web Impact Factors of computer science departments in UK and their RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) ranking in 2001. Scientometrics, 57(2), 239–255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lim, Y. S., & Park, H. W. (2011). How do congressional members appear on the web?: Tracking the web visibility of South Korean Politicians. Government Information Quarterly, forthcoming.

  • Marginson, S. (2007). Global university rankings: Implications in general and for Australia. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 29(2), 131–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Masterson, K. (2011). Can new online rankings really measure colleges’ brand strength? Unlikely, experts say. Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2011 from http://chronicle.com/article/Can-New-Online-Rankings-Really/126083/.

  • Matei, S. A. (2006). Globalization and heterogenization: Cultural and civilizational clustering in telecommunicative space (1989–1999). Telematics and Informatics, 23(3), 16–31.

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Monge, P. R., & Contractor, N. S. (2003). Theories of communication networks. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monge, P. R., & Matei, S. A. (2004). The role of the global telecommunications network in bridging economic, political divides, 1989 to 1999. Journal of Communication, 54(5), 11–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Niland, J. (2000). The challenge of building world class universities in the Asian Region. On Line opinion. Retrieved May 23, 2010, from http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=997.

  • Ortega, J. L., & Aguillo, I. F. (2009). Mapping world-class universities on the web. Information Processing and Management, 45, 272–279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ortega, J. L., Aguillo, I. F., Cothey, V., & Scharnhorst, A. (2008). Maps of the academic web in the European higher education area—An exploration of visual web indicators. Scientometrics, 74(2), 295–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Park, H. W. (2010). Mapping the e-science landscape in South Korea using the webometrics method. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 15, 211–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Park, H. W. (2011). How do social scientists use link data from search engines to understand Internet-based political and electoral communication. Quality & Quantity. doi:10.1007/s11135-010-9421-x.

  • Park, H. W., Barnett, G. A., & Chung, C. J. (2011). Structural changes in the 2003–2009 global hyperlink network. Global networks, 11(4), 522–542.

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, H. W., & Thelwall, M. (2006). Web science communication in the age of globalization. New Media & Society, 8(4), 629–650.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Payne, N., & Thelwall, M. (2004). A statistical analysis of UK academic web links. Cybermetrics, 8(1), paper 2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social theory and global culture. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosso, P., & Velasco, N. (2006). A Latin American private university strives to become “world class”. International Higher Education, 43, 18–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tang, R., & Thelwall, M. (2004). Patterns of national and international web inlinks to US academic departments: An analysis of disciplinary variations. Scientometrics, 60(3), 475–485.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M. (2002a). A research and institutional size based model for national university web site interlinking. Journal of Documentation, 58(6), 683–694.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M. (2002b). Evidence for the existence of geographic trends in university web site interlinking. Journal of Documentation, 58(5), 563–574.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • 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 and Technology, 54(7), 594–602.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., & Harries, G. (2004). Do the web sites of higher rated scholars have significantly more online impact? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(2), 149–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., Tang, R., & Price, L. (2003). Linguistic patterns of academic web use in Western Europe. Scientometrics, 56(3), 417–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Usher, A., & Savino, M. (2006). A world of difference: A global survey of university league tables. Toronto, ON: Educational Policy Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaughan, L., & Thelwall, M. (2004). Search engine coverage bias: Evidence and possible causes. Information Processing & Management, 40(4), 693–707.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaughan, L., & Thelwall, M. (2005). A modeling approach to uncover hyperlink patterns: The case of Canadian universities. Information Processing & Management, 41(2), 347–359.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, I. (1974). The modern world system. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yang, C. H., Park, H. W., & Heo, J. (2010). A network analysis of interdisciplinary research relationships: The Korean government’s R&D grant program. Scientometrics, 83(1), 77–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge a partial support from the SSK Program (National Research Foundation of Korea; NRF-2010-330-B00232). Also, the first author acknowledges that a brief summary of current research (Lee and Park 2011) is under review of International Higher Education published by The Boston College Center for International Higher Education.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Education Policy & Leadership, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Moosung Lee

  2. Department of Media and Communication, WCU Webometrics Institute, YeungNam University, 214-1 Dae-dong, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, 712-749, South Korea

    Han Woo Park

Authors
  1. Moosung Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Han Woo Park
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Han Woo Park.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lee, M., Park, H.W. Exploring the web visibility of world-class universities. Scientometrics 90, 201–218 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0515-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0515-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation