arab universities on the web: a webometric study
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Arab universities on the web:a webometric study
Amgad ElgoharyDepartment of Library and Information Science, School of Arts,
El-Minia University, El-Minia, Egypt
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Web Impact Factor of Arab universities.
Design/methodology/approach – The study included 99 universities representing 20 Arabcountries. The advanced search facility of AltaVista was used for data collection. Two rounds of datacollection were conducted to retrieve the links as well as the web presence of the included universities.
Findings – Jordanian universities represent 40 per cent of the top ten universities with the revisedweb impact factor. However, this was not the case in terms of the universities’ web presence. Resultsindicated a strong correlation between external links and web presence.
Research limitations/implications – The variability of search engine results and theunavailability of some university web sites are limitations to the study.
Originality/value – By investigating, for the first time, the Web Impact Factors of Arab universitiesas well as the relation to other variables such as language, the paper will provide universities withsome measure of how they are viewed by the outside world.
Keywords Worldwide web, Universities
Paper type Research paper
IntroductionThe internet is considered to be one of the most valuable information resources in allknowledge fields. In particular, the diversity of resources that are associated withdifferent languages as well as cultures is one of the main features of the web. Thisdiversity was associated with the vast increasing number for both resources as well asusers of the web which estimated as 167.1 per cent in 2005 (Internet Usage Statistics:Usage and Population Statistics, 2005). The Arab world constitutes not more than 5-6per cent of the published resources on the web, however this participation which wasonly 18,000 web sites in 1998 had reached 8 million by the end of 2004 (Madar ResearchGroup, 2004).
The major type of these resources is university web sites and these are consideredas being one of the essential channels of scholarly communications. Moreover, we canlook at these resources as a mirror of ongoing scholarly activities such as projects,academic development and its relation with the other universities. Consequentially, itwas believed there was a need to approach this environment and identify its impact onthe web environment as well as providing a rank of the Arab universities on the web.This impact can be identified from studying the hyperlinks of universities’ web sitessince hyperlinks are a major tool for finding information on the web amonginformation specialists along with portals, search engines, as well as the UnifiedResource Locator (Gordon and Pathak, 1999).This study investigates the web impact
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Received 8 May 2007Revised 10 June 2007Accepted 20 June 2007
The Electronic LibraryVol. 26 No. 3, 2008pp. 374-386q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0264-0473DOI 10.1108/02640470810879518
factor of the Arab universities calculated by the search engine AltaVista over tworounds of data collection.
Related worksWebometrics can be considered as an extension of the bibliometrics measurements thathas been applied in the traditional environment and the study of bibliometrics on theweb (Boudourides et al., 1999). In order to differentiate the domain of webometrics fromother concepts, Bjorneborn and Ingwersen (2004) described the webometric as aquantitative measure that concerns four major areas of analysis as follows:
(1) web page content analysis;
(2) web usage analysis;
(3) web technologies analysis; and
(4) the web link structure analysis.
The latter includes the link analysis studies and the web impact factor studies.The origin of the web impact factor (WIF) goes back to 1997 when the term proposed
by Spanish scholar at that time (Rodrıguez Gairın, 1997), however the recognizedintroduction of the concept associated with Almind and Ingwersens’ (1997) theoreticalwork and Ingwersens’ (1998) work. The latter was concerned with the calculation of themeasure. He proposed three major types of WIF as a quantitative measure of web sitesbased on the type of hyperlinks. The first, Internal WIF, is concerned with the internallinks that are presented in the same domain of the web site; the second type calledexternal web impact factor is concerned with the calculation of external links comingfrom outside the web site domain – we can call this type as revised WIF (Noruzi, 2005).The third type called overall WIF concerns the calculation of both internal and externallinks divided by the number of pages presented in the web sites’ domain.
The increasing number of studies concerned with various types of testing have ledto several literature reviews of the topic within the last ten years (i.e. Li, 2003; Thelwallet al., 2005; Noruzi, 2006a). In the meantime, journals, such as the Journal of theAmerican Society for Information Science and Technology, have devoted issues topresenting different approaches for the topic.
Many studies tested the WIF at different levels of domain. The earlier studiesconcentrated on testing the WIF for top level domain for countries (Ingwersen, 1997;Thelwall, 2001). Recent studies have investigated both top level domains (TLD) as wellas sub level domains (SLD) of educational institutions in various countries. Forexample, Noruzi (2006b) has computed the WIF at the TLD of 17 middle easterncountries combined with the WIF of the SLD of the educational institution in thesecountries. The study found that the majority of these countries had a low presence onthe web as well as a low number of links. However the language of the web site – forinstance Persian – might affect the attraction of these web sites in the webenvironment. A similar recent study computed the WIF of the TLD and SLD at sevenAsian countries (Mukhopadhyay, 2005).
In the context of academic institutions, a series of studies measured the WIF ofuniversities and academic departments in different countries. For example Thelwall(2001) – using the AltaVista search engine – investigated the WIF of 25 universities inthe UK and found a correlation between the WIF and the research quality of these
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375
universities. In another recent study, Noruzi (2005) ranked Iranian universities basedon their WIF. The study indicates low revised WIF – based on external links. Thisresult was associated with the language of the universities’ web sites. Similarconclusions were reached by Vaughan and Thelwall (2005) in their study regardingCanadian universities.
In the context of Arab universities, only one recent study – in Arabic – was found.The study computed the WIF for eight universities in Saudi Arabia (Farag, 2006). Thestudy used AltaVista to compute WIF and provide a surface association between theWIF and productivities of the universities studied. The research suggested explorationon a large scale of the hyperlinks among Arab universities. The current study aims tofill this gap in the literature as a starting point for a series of studies relating to theArab world in the local and global web environment.
Objectives and methodologyThe major objective of the study is to identify the top Arab universities with impact inthe web environment, and to investigate the some of the variables that might correlateto the web impact factor of these universities. In particular, the study tries to answerthe following research questions:
RQ1. What is the presence of Arab universities on the web?
RQ2. What are the Web Impact Factors for the Arab universities on the web?
RQ3. To what extent does the language of the university web site affects its webimpact factor?
RQ4. What is the correlation between the universities’ web presence and theirexternal inlinks?
In general, the study followed the descriptive approach. The research method used inthis study is survey method. In order to collect data, we used the list of Arabuniversities provided by the Association of Arab Universities (AARU) (www.aaru.edu.jo) – one of the related institutions to the Arab League. This list includes all subscriberuniversities (both governmental and private) to the AARU and tends to be the mostcomprehensive list of Arab universities. Before using the list, we have checked theaccess of each university web sites. At the time of data collection, seven web sites werenot working – either the site is not available or the link refers to the university pageunder the same AARU domain – and two web sites were under constructions. Thesenine universities were excluded from the study (Table I).
The URLs of the remaining 99 web sites were collected and coded in a separate filealong with other variables such as type of university, country, and language of the website. The universities covered 20 Arab countries that are members of AARU. Table IIshows the distribution of universities according to country affiliation.
As shown in the Table, about one third of universities are only related to twocountries (Jordan and Egypt) and five countries are represented with only oneuniversity for each in the list. This distribution gives a clue that results might beaffected by countries more than universities. In terms of type of university the listincluded 38 (38.38 per cent) private universities and 61 (61.62 per cent governmentaluniversities. As shown in Table III, the language of the web sites varied among
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Reason for not inclusion University
No web site available Emir Abdel-Kader UniversityUnder the same AARU domain Houari Boumedienne University of Science and
TechnologyNo web site available Seventh of April UniversityUnder the same AARU domain Modern Science and Arts UniversityNo web site available Alfayoum UniversityUnder the same AARU domain German-Jordan UniversityUnder the same AARU domain Tafila Technical University(Under construction) www.suez.eun.eg Suez Canal University(Under construction) www.miuegypt.com Misr International University
Table I.Omitted universities from
the study
Country Number of universities Percentage of the total list
Algeria 5 5.10Bahrain 2 2.02Egypt 14 14.14Iraq 2 2.00Jordan 17 17.10Kuwait 1 1.01Lebanon 8 8.10Libya 3 3.03Mauritania 1 1.01Morocco 3 3.03Oman 1 1.01Palestine 10 10.10Qatar 1 1.01Saudi Arabia 8 8.08Somali 1 1.01Sudan 5 5.10Syria 3 3.00Tunisia 2 2.02UAE 3 3.03Yemen 9 9.10Total 99 100
Table II.Distribution of Arab
universities according tocountry of affiliation
Language Number of universities Percentage
French only 6 6.06English/French 2 2.02French/Arabic/English 6 6.06English only 17 17.17Arabic/English 52 52.53Arabic only 16 16.16
Table III.Distribution of Arab
universities according tothe language of
universities’ web sites
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377
English, Arabic, and French or mix of it. 76 per cent of the web sites including Englishlanguage and 75 per cent of them included Arabic.
In terms of data collection, many previous studies have used commercial searchengines for the purpose. However, many problems affect the validity and reliability ofthe data gathered using this tool. One main challenge is the convergence of searchengines of available web sites as major search engines are not cover more than 16 percent of web sites (Lawrence and Giles, 1999).Another challenge is the validity of resultsover many search engines and from the same search engines over different times. Thevariability of results not only happens as a cause of search engines indexing methods,but also as a result of changes that occur to the educational URL over time (Markwelland Brooks, 2002).
Because of constraints of using academic web crawlers, the study has used theAltaVista advanced search as a tool for data collection. To reduce the variability ofresults, two rounds of data collation were conducted with two weeks in between thefirst and the second round. The first round took place on 26-03-2007, and the secondround took place on 08-04-2007. There were no major changes in the results of bothrounds. However, the average of the two rounds was calculated and used as a basic forcomputing the web impact factor.
In terms of search formulas, many strategies were tested before collecting the data.For example, first the following form was used to retrieve the inlinks: linkdomain:birzeit.edu, and it retrieved 18.200 results. Then the following form was used:linkdomain: birzeit./ OR linkdomain: www.birzeit.ed, and this one retrieved 26,000results. The search formulas used are listed in Table IV.
To compute the overall WIF A (inlinks) was divided by C (number of pages at thedomain as indexed by AltaVista). For computing the Revised WIF, B (external outlinkswhich means the number of outlinks that are linked to the site from other sites out thedomain) was divided by C (number of pages at the domain as indexed by AltaVista).To assure the validity of results, the researcher checked and visited one of each set ofresults – web page. This page was selected randomly for the purpose of correctness ofresults.
ResultsWeb presenceData showed that the web presence of Arab universities varied drastically. Only 45universities (46 per cent) have more than 1,000 pages indexed in all languages byAltaVista. In terms of the type of university, it was found that 73 per cent of theseuniversities are governmental. Approximately the same percentage (70 per cent)represented the type of university for the highest ten universities. The web presence of
Search form Type of data
(linkdomain:www.bizit.edu/ORlinkdomain:birzeit.edu)
(A) Inlink
(linkdomain:www.birzeit.edu/ORlinkdomain:birzeit.edu) NOT (domain:www.birzeit.edu/OR domain:birzeit.edu)
(B) External links
(domain:www.birzeit.edu/ OR domain:berziet.edu) (C) Number of pages at the site
Table IV.Search formulas for thedata collection
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the other universities ranged from 893 pages to 1 page. The highest universities wereaffiliated with only six countries. As shown in Figure 1, there are four universities fromSaudi Arabia, and two from Lebanon. This result supports the findings of Noruzi’s(2006b) study, in which Saudi Arabia placed fourth in the list of Middle Easterncountries with the highest web presence (after Israel, Turkey, Iran) – and the first oneover the 13 Arab countries that were included in the study.
The results showed that the languages of the web sites of two universities areFrench and Arabic (Table V). Although this represents only 20 per cent of the listhowever, it is still worth to investigate this point. In other words, it would beinteresting to investigate the content of these two universities and how bothuniversities are listed in the top ten universities with web presence although none ofthem include the English language.
In addition, one can say that the web presence of the university is not correlated toits foundation as the above list does not include the oldest universities in the Arabworld that are located in both Egypt and Jordan. For example, Cairo University – theoldest Arab university, founded in 1908 – is listed as number 22 according to its webpresence. See Table VI for the complete list.
Figure 1.Distribution of Countries
with top ten web presenceuniversities
University Country Language Type
King Fahd University Saudi Arabia English/Arabic GovernmentalUniversity of Arab Emeritus UAE English GovernmentalKing Abdul-Aziz University Saudi Arabia Arabic GovernmentalKuwait University Kuwait English GovernmentalSaint-Joseph University of Beirut Lebanon French PrivateBeirut Arab University Lebanon English/Arabic PrivateKing Saud University Saudi Arabia English/Arabic GovernmentalPhiladelphia University Jordan English/Arabic PrivateIslamic University in Lebanon Saudi Arabia English/Arabic GovernmentalAl Najah University Palestine English/Arabic Private
Table V.Top ten Arab universities
with web presence
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University nameWeb
presenceRevised
WIF Country Type
King Fahd University for Petroleum andMinerals 94,100 0.0470 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalUnited Arab Emirates University 27,700 0.2494 UAE GovernmentalKing Abdul-Aziz University 22,500 0.0533 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalKuwait University 15,800 0.2455 Kuwait GovernmentalSaint-Joseph University of Beirut 13,400 0.2037 Lebanon PrivateBeirut Arab University 12,700 0.0803 Lebanon PrivateKing Saud University 11,800 0.0966 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalPhiladelphia University 11,500 0.0668 Jordan PrivateIslamic University 11,200 0.0621 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalAl Najah University 10,500 0.4352 Palestine PrivateBirzeit University 9,610 1.1342 Palestine PrivateKing Faisal University 9,590 0.0383 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalKhartoum University 8,550 0.0906 Sudan GovernmentalOman University 8,550 0.3847 Oman GovernmentalUniversity of Jordan 8,090 0.3065 Jordan GovernmentalIslamic University In Gaza 7,000 0.1365 Palestine PrivateSharjah University 6,600 0.1545 UAE GovernmentalMansoura University 6,340 0.1064 Egypt GovernmentalAlquds University 6,320 0.3243 Palestine PrivateQatar University 6,020 0.3139 Qatar GovernmentalCairo University 5,450 0.3779 Egypt GovernmentalJordan University of Science and Technology 4,960 0.3608 Jordan GovernmentalOm Alqoara University 4,280 0.1985 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalKing Khalid University 3,300 0.0615 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalMiser International University 3,170 0.0293 Egypt PrivateAssuit University 3,150 0.0806 Egypt GovernmentalBethlehem University 2,760 0.5688 Palestine PrivateAinshams University 2,610 0.3375 Egypt GovernmentalMu’tah University 2,500 0.228 Jordan GovernmentalArabian Gulf University 2,460 0.2020 Bahrain Regional (private)University of Bahrain 2,330 0.4120 Bahrain GovernmentalThe Hashemite University 2,320 0.2340 Jordan GovernmentalYarmouk University 2,060 0.0728 Jordan GovernmentalOpen Quads University 2,060 0.6893 Palestine GovernmentalUniversity of Balamand 1,950 0.8102 Lebanon PrivateUniversity of Mohammed Bou Mediaf forScience and Technology 1,890 0.0428 Algeria GovernmentalSana’a University 1,540 0.0694 Yemen GovernmentalMinia University 1,390 0.1467 Egypt GovernmentalGaryounis University 1,370 0.1357 Libya GovernmentalUniversite Mohammed Premier Oujda 1,270 0.1685 Morocco GovernmentalZagazig University 1,170 0.1461 Egypt GovernmentalSouth Valley University 1,130 0.1415 Egypt GovernmentalNotre Dame University 1,100 0.7645 Lebanon PrivateAjman University 1,070 1.1028 UAE PrivateImam Mohamed Bin Saud University 1,060 0.3811 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalLebanese University 893 0.8756 Lebanon GovernmentalAl Balqa Applied University 718 0.7813 Jordan GovernmentalAl al-Bayat University 707 0.6930 Jordan GovernmentalMenoufia University 705 0.3347 Egypt Governmental
(continued )
Table VI.Arab universities webpresence and revised WIF
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University nameWeb
presenceRevised
WIF Country Type
Tanta University 656 0.3978 Egypt GovernmentalZarka Private University 646 0.2848 Jordan PrivateApplied Science University 634 0.6955 Jordan PrivateAl Jinan University 627 0.1977 Lebanon PrivateHalab University 605 0.2876 Syria GovernmentalHassan II University 517 0.0638 Morocco GovernmentalUniversity of Petra 502 0.1334 Jordan PrivateAl Hussein bin Talal University 471 0.2080 Jordan GovernmentalAlazhar University in Gaza 462 2.3809 Palestine PrivateTunis Private University 454 0.5330 Tunisia PrivateHelwan University 416 0.6129 Egypt GovernmentalHebron University 383 0.8172 Palestine PrivateMogadishu University 357 36.97 Somalia PrivateUniversity of Nouakchott 336 2.0952 Mauritania GovernmentalSalah Aladdin University 325 1.08 Iraq GovernmentalHadhramout University of Science andTechnology 319 0.2037 Yemen GovernmentalUniversity of Algiers 310 1.1354 Algeria GovernmentalUniversity of Kalamoon 278 0.2338 Syria PrivateAl Baath University 249 0.3132 Syria GovernmentalPalestine Polytechnic University 239 0.7196 Palestine PrivateAljazerah University 235 0.5021 Sudan GovernmentalArab American University 222 3.3018 Palestine PrivateAla-hillya Amman University 200 0.155 Jordan PrivateSaba University 200 4.09 Yemen PrivateMiser University for Science and Technology 198 0.7424 Egypt PrivateOmar Almoktar University 164 0.0609 Libya GovernmentalAlzaytoonah Jordanian Private University 157 0.9554 Jordan PrivateMohammed V-Agdal University 154 0.2792 Morocco GovernmentalAl-isra Private University 150 0.68 Jordan PrivateUniversity of Oran 131 1.2900 Algeria GovernmentalAalahfad University 96 5.5937 Sudan PrivateUniversity of Tunis Al-Manar 91 1.4725 Tunisia GovernmentalHodeida University 90 0.4111 Yemen GovernmentalIbb University 89 0.3258 Yemen GovernmentalAl-Ahgaff University 82 3.8536 Yemen PrivateUniversity Mentouri Constantine 78 0.9487 Algeria GovernmentalUniversity of Science and Technology 72 7.7916 Yemen PrivateSabha University 68 0.2794 Libya GovernmentalQueen Arwa University for Academic Sciences 57 0.5614 Yemen PrivateUniversity of Alexandria 54 7.4259 Egypt GovernmentalJerash University 49 0.9591 Jordan PrivateHoly Spirit University of Kaslik 37 7.9459 Lebanon PrivateAdan University 31 3.1290 Yemen GovernmentalOmdurman Islamic University 27 0.3333 Sudan Governmental6 October University 25 0.96 Egypt PrivateUniversity of Nyala 20 0.35 Sudan GovernmentalIrbid National University 9 4.7777 Jordan PrivateIslamic University of Lebanon 8 8.375 Lebanon GovernmentalUniversity of Baghdad 4 35.25 Iraq PrivateAnnaba University 1 103 Algeria Governmental Table VI.
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381
Web impact factorTo compute the revised WIF, we divided the number of external links by the number ofpages indexed at each domain by AltaVista. The low presence of many universities hasaffected the computation of the WIF, some of these universities WIF reached 35 whichis considered as an anomaly, for example see the last four universities in Table VI. Sothat, for the purpose of computing WIF, we only considered universities with webpresence more than 500. In this case 43 universities have been removed from thecalculation, however, the complete list of 99 universities with their WIF is given inTable VI. This has limited the number of affiliated countries to 16 instead of 20 asshown in Figure 2.
Although three Lebanese universities are listed in the top ten universities(Table VII), when we calculated the average of universities with their revised WIF,Lebanon actually came last as shown in Figure 2.
As shown in the Table VII, Jordanian universities represents 40 per cent of the topten universities with the revised web impact factor. This is not relating to the webpresence of these universities as much as it is relating to external links. Regarding typeof the university, 60 per cent of the top ten universities are private. If we focus ourresults on the first five universities we can see that three of the five universities areprivate. This might be explained as that the private universities work more on theirweb sites and optimize their indexing rate in the search engines as well as theincreasing number of external links to these universities more than governmentaluniversities. One might claim that governmental universities are not much concernedwith their web sites or do not employ specialists (i.e. webmasters) to be responsible forthe university web site as it might happen at the private universities.
Also, all universities have English as a main or associate language of their websites. Out of the 56 universities, eligible for computation of WIF, 45 universities (80 percent) included English as a single or associate language in their web sites and onlyseven universities (13 per cent) are only in Arabic while four universities (7 per cent)are only in French. These results might support the hypothesis regarding theimportance of the English language and how it might affects the WIF. However, bylooking at the top ten universities with web presence in English only, we can find noneof these universities is located in the top ten list of universities with the revised WIF. In
Figure 2.Distribution of the Arabcountries with the averageof revised WIF ofuniversities
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5641
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455
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634
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5583
596
Al
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490
707
1.66
1951
909
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307
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Table VII.Top ten Arab universitieswith revised web impact
factor
Arab universitieson the web
383
the meantime, by conducting Spearman’s correlation between the revised WIF and theEnglish web presence of the 56 universities, we found a negative results asr ¼ (20.136). Moreover, none of the top universities with revised WIF was found in thelist of the top universities with English web presence as listed in Table VIII.
On the other hand, one can hypothesis that there is a correlation between webpresence and external links. This has been tested by Spearman’s correlation test for the56 universities with web presence more than 500. The result indicate a significantcorrelation (r ¼ 0.70) between the two variables.
In terms of the top ten universities with external links (Table IX), we found thatPalestine represents 30 per cent of the list with 32 universities. The list includeduniversities from countries that are not listed in the previous tables at all such as Egyptand Oman.
The comparison of the list in Table VIII with the list of top universities with webpresence (Table V) indicates that there is overlapping of five universities at both lists.This supports the hypothesis that there is strong correlation between the web presenceand external links.
ConclusionAlthough web search engines are not ideally appropriate for measuring the web impactfactor, it is still a very applicable tool. The variability of results of the same search
University
Presence ofthe web site in
English
Percentage ofEnglishpresence Revised WIF
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals 85,700 91.07 0.047078United Arab Emirates University 25,500 92.05 0.249458King Abdul-Aziz University 11,400 50.66 0.053333Kuwait University 9,410 59.55 0.24557Philadelphia University 8,900 77.39 0.06687Khartoum University 8,090 94.61 0.090643Oman University 7,760 90.76 0.384795University of Jordan 6,630 81.95 0.306551Sharjah University 5,380 81.51515 0.154545Alquds University 5,370 84.96835 0.324367
Table VIII.Top ten Arab universitieswith web presence inEnglish
University External links Country Type
Birzeit University 10,900 Palestine PrivateUnited Arab Emirates University 6,910 UAE GovernmentalAl Najah University 4,570 Palestine PrivateKing Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals 4,430 Saudi Arabia GovernmentalKuwait University 3,880 Kuwait GovernmentalOman University 3,290 Oman GovernmentalSaint-Joseph University of Beirut 2,730 Lebanon PrivateUniversity of Jordan 2,480 Jordan GovernmentalCairo University 2,060 Egypt GovernmentalAlquds University 2,050 Palestine Private
Table IX.Top ten Arab universitieswith external links
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engine over different times is the main limitation of the study. However, the data wascollected on two rounds to minimize this problem. The results indicated that SaudiArabian Universities represent 40 per cent of the top Arab universities in terms of theirweb presence. However, none of these universities were located in the top tenuniversities with revised WIF. Four Jordanian universities were included in that list.Results of the study indicated that there is a strong correlation between external linksand web presence. In this context one can say that more web presence lead to moreexternal links. Also, the study indicated no association of the age of the university andits web presence and its WIF. The type of university might be correlated to its webpresence as well as its WIF. According to the study, private universities found to bepreceding the governmental universities for the top five universities in the Arab world.
More than 40 per cent of the Arab universities have a low web presence – less than 500pages, and some of these universities have also a very low number of external links at thesame time. This has affected the level of the web impact factor of these universities andproduces irregular figures. This issue is considered as one of the problems with thecalculation of the web impact factor. It is worth noting, though, that the availability ofhard science departments at the university as well as the inclusion of the university’s website of information about these departments might affect its web presence and its WIF.
As it seems that Arab universities are consumers and not producers of scientificknowledge in the hard science fields, this can be one of the reasons for the low webpresence of many of the studies universities. It will be useful to investigate such reasonin further research. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to investigate the hyperlinkstructure of the Arab universities on the web, identify any affects of the geographicalor cultural factors, and investigate the motivations of these hyperlinks.
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Rodrıguez Gairın, J.M. (1997), “Valorando el impacto de la informacion en Internet: Altavista, el‘Citation Index’ de la Red (Impact assessment of information on the Internet: AltaVista, the‘citation index’ of the web)”, Revista Espanola de Documentacion Scientifica, Vol. 20 No. 2,pp. 175-81, available at: www.kronosdoc.com/publicacions/altavis.htm
Thelwall, M. (2001), “Extracting macroscopic information from web links”, Journal of theAmerican Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 52 No. 13, pp. 1157-68.
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Further reading
Smith, A.G. and Thelwall, M. (2002), “Web impact factors for Australasian universities”,Scientometrics, Vol. 54 No. 3, pp. 363-80.
Thelwall, M. (2002), “Conceptualizing documentation on the web: an evaluation of differentheuristic-based models for counting links between university web sites”, Journal of theAmerican Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 53 No. 12, pp. 995-1005.
Thelwall, M. and Tang, R. (2003), “Disciplinary and linguistic considerations for academic weblinking: an exploratory hyperlink mediated study with Mainland China and Taiwan”,Scientometrics, Vol. 58 No. 1, pp. 153-79.
About the authorsAmgad Elgohary works as Assistant Professor of information science at the Department ofLibrary and Information Science at El-Minia University, Egypt. He received his MLIS from theUniversity of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 2000, and his PhD in information studies from FloridaState University in 2003. He worked at Florida State University as Teaching Assistant. ResearchAssistant, and as an Adjunct Instructor for three years. He worked as the first Director of theconsortium of digital libraries in Egypt from 2005 to 2006. His research interests includeinformation behaviors in the digital environment, information retrieval, and electronicinformation services. Amgad Elgohary can be contacted at: [email protected]
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