Academic Competitiveness and Website Rankings

Alina Andreica, Carmen Ciplea alina@staff.ubbcluj.ro carmen@cc.ubbcluj.ro

Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Topics• Proficient IT strategies• Academic websites

• Goals• Evaluation: organizational, technical• Traffic, feed-back / log analysis

• Webometrics• Romanian institutions’ ranking • BBU positioning & measures for rank

improvement

• BBU web site• Conclusions

Strategies for Implementing ICT within Organizations

• The larger the organization, its resources &investments, the more relevant are ICT “consequences”• IT strategy must be designed according to

the organization’s goals & resources adjusted & approved by management levels

Organization objective & activity target field

Management style & strategy

Financial Resources Human Resources Policy

Strategies for Implementing ICT within Organizations

• ICT implementations should be adapted to:• The aim of the organization & activity

target field •different objectives and target fields

impose specific characteristics on IT strategies

•Financial resources / possibilities •the degree of willingness to invest in ICT

depends on involvement & awareness of IT benefits

Strategies for Implementing ICT within Organizations

• ICT implementations should be adapted to:• Human resources policy – in IT

•create proper strategies within a plan of efficient ICT implementation

•network admins, software developers, project managers

•Management style and strategy –•Integrating IT strategy into the overall

management strategy • awareness of IT efficiency

Academic web sites goals

• Promote the university’s• Educational programs• Research programs • E-learning programs • Social responsibility programs• Alumni • Ensure communication meanstowards the public community

Academic web sites goals

• BBU specifics• Multicultural character – linguistic policy• Tradition & dynamism • Research & educational opportunities -

Competitive programs • Comprehensive structure• Bridging Eastern-Western cultures• High quality infrastructure• Student tutorial support

Web sites evaluation• Organizational – the degree in which it

complies to the organization’s goals, requirements, resources and level of development –information relevance, content structuring, visual identity and facilities should comply these requirements

• Technical – accessibility, navigability, interactivity, density –criteria list adapted from a procedure proposed within the Marketing Institute of the Westfalische Universität Münster http://www.marketing-centrum.de/ifm/de/

Technical Web sites evaluation

• Accesibility – navigability characteristics, speed and simplicity in finding the desired information

• all pages and hyperlinks are functional • free / password based access to information; the site

includes contact information

• help / FAQ section, confidentiality terms / terms of use ; • Interactivity – images and animation should be

attractive but not excessive• if additional software is needed to view the content (for

example Flash Player), it should be downloadable• are advertising objects included on the page ? (excessive

ads are not recommended and often companies who are greedy in placing other ads create themselves a better image) ;

Technical web sites evaluation• information density – information should be logically

structured, easy to find • well-adjusted and balanced between home and secondary

pages • images and graphs highlighten the content • pages display a pleasant design;

• information up-to-date – the site should display the date of releasing the information and the date of the last update • copyright mark and reference should also be present;

• information accuracy and correctness –published information should be correct, relevant and detailed in respect with user needs • if the information doesn’t belong to the site owner,

references should be specified

Web sites evaluation• Web analytics tools

• Traffic - for example the analyser www.alexa.com • Ranking in search engines -

www.googlerankings.com; www.yahoosearchrankings.com

• Color contrast (readability) – for example the analysor www.accesskeys.org

• Speed in page loading – for example the analyser www.websiteoptimization.com

• a web site should be systematically monitored by feed-back analysis using traffic and log information analysis

Academic Web rankings• Cybermetrics Research Group –

www.webometrics.info, part of the National Research Council of Spain, proposed an Internet ranking methodology of academic institutions• since the mid of this decade, based on its

prior researches in web metrics indicators • aims at revealing the importance measuring

the Internet (web) data for evaluating scientific activity, competitiveness & impact

Academic Web rankingsThe proposed indicators

http://www.webometrics.info/methodology.html are: • Visibility – the number of external links to the

evaluated domain – the methodology synthesizes the results obtained from Yahoo search engine (previously also from s Google, Live Search and Exalead) and normalizes the obtained values;

• Size – the number of pages in the evaluated domain – the methodology synthesizes the results obtained from Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead search engines (results are normalized, best and worst values excluded, and then the average value is computed);

Academic web rankings• Rich files – the number of the files posted in the

evaluated domain; following types are taken into account: .pdf - Adobe Acrobat PDF file, .ps - Adobe Postscript file, .doc - Microsoft Word file, .ppt - Microsoft Powerpoint file;

• Scholar – the number of published papers in internationally indexed databases and citations – originated from the academic domain • the evaluation is performed using Google Scholar application

http://scholar.google.com

• The final rank WR [webm] is obtained by weighting 50% the visibility indicator V, 20% the size indicator S and 15% the rich files RF and scholar SC indicators:

WR=4*V+2*S+1*RF+1*SC

Webometrics ranking Webometrics Ranking of the best placed Romanian universities in the World's Universities Webometrics Ranking at July 26 2009 (lower rank is a better hierarchy position) / Source: http://www.webometrics.info/top4000.asp – accessed July 28, 2009

Top 6 webometrics http://www.webometrics.info/top4000.asp

Webometrics ranking

BBU evolution in Webometrics hierarchy 2008-2009 Source: http://www.webometrics.info/top4000.asp Note: lower rank represents a better position

Webometrics ranking

Evolution of best placed Romanian universities in Webometrics hierarchy 2008-2009 Note: good ranking of technical universities since January 2009

Web rankings

Romanian universities in webometrics

020406080

100120140160180

January,2008

July,2008

January,2009

July,2009

month, year

10

00

0/r

an

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Universitatea„Babeş-Bolyai”

UniversitateaPolitehnica Bucureşti

UniversitateaBucureşti

ASE Bucuresti

Universitatea A. I.Cuza Iasi

Universitatea TehnicaG. Asachi Iasi

Consistency & security problems

• Trojan Clicker.html virus threat• http://www.viruslist.com/en/virusesdescribed?

chapter=153317864• Infects php applications – moodle calendars, blogs,

forums, galleries by fraudulously inserting into the page source (tens to) hundreds of external links, in most cases invisible, void or automatically generated

• Fraudulous increase in the number of external links for some academic institutions with tens / hundred thousands external links / week !

• Distorsion of visibility ranking!

BBU main website

BBU Admission web site

BBU Students web site

BBU International students web site

BBU News

BBU academic extensions

Development directions• Increasing the webometrics visibility indicator

by activating international cooperations, as well as academic and public partnerships;

• Continuing to increase the webometrics size indicator by including all BBU chairs, research centres, institutes and academic extensions within BBU domain ubbcluj.ro • Implemented measures: websites for conferences

– conference.ubbcluj.ro, grants – granturi.ubbcluj.ro, institutes – institute.ubbcluj.ro , academic extensions – extensii.ubbcluj.ro

Development directions• Continuing to increase the webometrics size & rich

files indicators by taking advantage of the decentralized structure of BBU website:• developing web sites at all BBU levels – faculties, centres,

institues, chairs; • developing the conferences, research projects, international

programs web sites within ubbcluj.ro domain; • posting relevant information files on these websites; • Developing staff web sites

• Continuing to increase the scholar indicator by extending the publication of BBU’s research activity in internationally recognized journals and publishing houses, indexed in scientific databases

Conclusions

• Adaptation to organization’s goals – BBU specific features

• Web sites evaluation tools • Traffic analysis & feed-back monitoring

• Web rankings & criteria• Webometrics criteria

• Size, visibility, rich files, scholar • Ranking accuracy ensurance• Strategies for ranking improvement