Ranking Web of Universities: July 2009 edition
The July edition of the Ranking Web of World Universities (http://www.webometrics.info) shows important news. Most of them are due to changes done to improve the academic impact of the open web contents and to reduce the geographical bias of search engines. As a result, the US universities still lead the Ranking (MIT with its huge Open Courseware is again the first, followed by Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley), but the digital gap with their European counterparts (Cambridge and Oxford are in the region’s top) has been reduced. Even more important, some of the developing countries institutions reach high ranks, especially in Latin America where the University of Sao Paulo (38th) and UNAM (44th) benefits from the increasingly interconnected Brazilian and Mexican academic webspaces. Several countries improves their performance including Taiwan and Saudi Arabia with strong web oriented strategies, Czech Republic (Charles), the leader for Eastern Europe, Spain (Complutense) and Portugal (Minho, Porto) with huge repositories and strong Open Access initiatives. Norway (NTNU, Oslo), Egypt could be also mentioned. On the other side, the underrated are headed by France, with a very fragmented system, Korea, whose student-oriented websites are frequently duplicated, New Zealand, India or Argentina. Africa is still monopolized by South African universities (Cape Town is the first, 405th), as well as Australian Universities are the best ranked for Oceania (Australian National University, 77th) Other well performing institutions include Cornell or Caltech in the USA, Tokyo (24th) Toronto (28th), Hong Kong (91st), or Peking (104th). On the contrary, in positions below expected we find Yale, Princeton, Saint Petersburg, Seoul and the Indian Institutes of Science or Technology. Check out also: Ranking Web of Research Centers http://research.webometrics.info/ Ranking Web of Repositories http://repositories.webometrics.info/ Ranking Web of Hospitals http://hospitals.webometrics.info/ Ranking Web of Business Schools http://business-schools.webometrics.info/ -- ************************************* Isidro F. Aguillo, HonPhD Cybermetrics Lab CCHS - CSIC Albasanz, 26-28, 3C1. 28037 Madrid. Spain Ph. 91-602 2890. Fax: 91-602 2971 isidro.aguillo @ cchs.csic.es www. webometrics.info *************************************
Ranking Web of World Universities: 2010 edition The first 2010 edition of the Ranking Web of Universities is already available in the webometrics site (http://www.webometrics.info), including a larger coverage and improved methodology. The ranking started in 2004 analyzes more than 18,000 universities worldwide providing the classification for the top 8,000, many of them from developing countries traditionally ignored in other rankings. The basic premise is that in the 21st century the web should reflect the organization, activities, research results, knowledge transfer, prestige, and international visibility of the universities. If the web performance of an institution is below the expected position according to their academic excellence, university authorities should reconsider their web policy, promoting substantial increases of the volume and quality of their electronic publications. The web indicators are easy to collect and analyze and since the results are similar to those obtained for a few hundred universities by other far more complex and expensive rankings, the Ranking Web provide in this way the opportunity of obtaining reliable ranks for several thousand institutions. The Ranking web with its large coverage allows comparisons not only between universities but also countries and regions, highlighting the role of nation building institutions that are non-research intensive oriented. Academic ranking is only one of the aims of the webometrics site, as showing bad web policies and promoting the Open Access initiatives are objectives targeted explicitly. Web presence measures the activity and visibility of the institutions and it is a good indicator of impact and prestige of universities. Rank summarizes the global performance of the University, provides information for candidate students and scholars, and reflects the commitment to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. “The university must seek excellence. The recognition of the institutions corresponds to the international community and to the economic, social and politic agents involved in the university activity. Nowadays, the best way to measure all of these acknowledgments is through the measure of the Web link visibility, a true virtual referendum about the university excellence”, said Isidro Aguillo, editor of the Ranking (Cybermetrics Lab – CSIC). With respect to the results, like in previous editions, the first positions are occupied by North American and Canadian universities, with a virtual draw on first position between Harvard and MIT, followed by Stanford, Berkeley, etc. European universities appear still in delayed positions, with the first one being Cambridge ranked on the 27th place. Regarding to results according to region, the first ones are: • Latin America: Sao Paulo, closely followed by UNAM • Europe: Cambridge and Oxford • Eastern Europe: Charles University (Prague) • Asia: Tokyo University • South East Asia: National University of Singapore • South Asia: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay • Oceania: Australian National University • Africa: University of Cape Town The Ranking Web is being elaborated by the Cybermetrics Lab is a research group belonging to the National Research Council (CSIC), the main public research organization in Spain. Since mid-nineties this group has designed web indicators for describing and evaluating the higher education and R&D sectors. The Ranking Web is widely used by students, scholars and directive staff of universities all over the world, receiving more than 4 million visitors per year. -- ************************************* Isidro F. Aguillo, HonPhD Cybermetrics Lab CCHS - CSIC Albasanz, 26-28, 3C1. 28037 Madrid. Spain Ph. 91-602 2890. Fax: 91-602 2971 isidro.aguillo @ cchs.csic.es www. webometrics.info *************************************
The Cybermetrics Lab from CSIC has just published the new July 2010 edition of their Ranking Web of World Universities (http://www.webometrics.info). In this new edition, the coverage of the Asian region has been greatly expanded and the number of higher education institutions analyzed is over 20,000 being offered the ranking of the Top 12,000. North American universities still lead the tables (Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley are the first four), together with the Canadian institutions behaving very well surpassing the privilege positions of the British ones. In Europe, apart from the mentioned British (Cambridge and Oxford and Edinburgh in Scotland), it is also worth mentioning the rankings of the Swiss (ETH Zurich) and the Nordic ones (Helsinki, Oslo).In more delayed positions appear the universities from Germany, France, Italy or Spain, mostly due to the fact that research in this countries is developed by independent institutions (Max Planck, CNRS, CNR, CSIC). In Latin America the UNAM from Mexico reaches the 70th of the world, being specially remarkable the large number of Brazilian universities, leaded by Sao Paulo, found between the best of the region. Universities of Chile and Buenos Aires are positioned just behind. Universities of Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore lead the Asian ranking, and behind them are the Taiwanese and Korean ones. Chinese universities are still lagging behind their neighbors and the institutions from the Indian subcontinent have delayed ranks. The Ranking Web of World research Centers (http://research.webometrics.info) complements the previous one, with a directory of more than 7,000 entries from which the classification of the Top 4000 is offered. The National Institutes of Health of USA and NASA lead the Ranking, being followed very closely by the French CNRS. The Cybermetrics Lab develops its activities at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales of the CSIC in Madrid. Their rankings are being published twice a year (January and July) since 2004 and they pretend to motivate and reinforce the role of the university as a source and distributor of web contents of high quality and open access. -- =========================== Isidro F. Aguillo, HonPhD Cybermetrics Lab (3C1) IPP-CCHS-CSIC Albasanz, 26-28 28037 Madrid. Spain Editor of the Rankings Web ===========================
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Isidro F. Aguillo