Webometrics Ranking of Algerian academic websites

26 Pages·2015·1.97 MB·English

by  Michel Boisclair

Webometrics Ranking of Algerian academic websites…

Webometrics Ranking of Algerian academic websites: what priorities and
what tools to progress?
Rabah KHEDIM
Djillali Liabes University of Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria.

Abstract
The different rankings of universities (Shanghai, SCImago, etc.) are an assessment and
creating competitiveness tools that contribute to the advancement of Higher Education
Institutions. One of these is the Webometrics ranking which reflect the image and the reputation
of Higher Education Institutions. In this article, the most recent webometrics ranking of
Algerian academic websites was read and all ranked websites were analyzed according to
several parameters. Then, a comparative study of these sites was performed for find the best
tools of their amelioration. The results show that the existence of institutional repositories, open
access journals and e-learning platforms, the increasing of subdomains number and the use of
social media improve the rank of Algerian academic websites in Webometrics ranking.
Keywords: Webometrics ranking, visibility, Higher Education Institutions, social media,
academic website.
Résumé
Les différents classements des Universités (Shanghai, SCImago, etc.) constituent des
outils d'évaluation et de création de compétitivité. Parmi ces classements, il y a le classement
webométrique qui reflète l'image et la reputation des établissements d'enseignement supérieur.
Dans cet article, le classement webométrique le plus récent des sites web académiques algérien
est lu, puis tous les sites web académiques algériens classés ont été analysés selon plusieurs
paramètres. Ensuite, une étude comparative de ces sites a été faite afin de trouver les meilleurs
outils pour les améliorer. Les résultats montrent que l'existence de dépôts institutionnels, des
revues en libre accès et des plates-formes d’e-learning, l'augmentation du nombre de sous-
domaines et l'utilisation des médias sociaux peuvent améliorer le rang de ces sites dans le
classement webométrique.
Mots clés : classement webométrique, visibilité, établissements d'enseignement supérieur,
médias sociaux, site web académique.

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1. Introduction
Internationalization of higher education has been a trend in quite many developing
countries (J. Lee and You 2011). In addition, the website of Higher Education Institutions plays
a strategic role in the communication dynamics of a university, especially in a national and
international context increasingly competitive (Dahmane et al. 2013).
Academic websites in a country are the most important tools of Internet communication
(Anwarul Islam et al. 2011). They can be used as a way to attract students, scholars and funding
from other places, spreading the prestige of these educational institutions all over the world
(Ortega and Aguillo 2009). The Internet has played and will play a “key role in forging the
academic and educational competencies of universities across countries through various e-
learning programs and open sources” (Lee and Park 2011). It constitutes a powerful way to
communicate scientific results (Ortega et al. 2011). Hence, Web visibility of universities has
been critically appreciated (Ortega and Aguillo 2009) and Web Impact assessment studies are
gaining attention every day because they are useful to improve the content of the institution's
website who want to attract customers through their website (Swaminathan et al. 2013).
This popularity of university websites suggests that Higher Education Institutions
should put real effort into using the new medium as a communication tool (Will and Callison
2006). Effectively, University administrators have started to recognize the university website
as an important channel to increase institutional reputation and organizational image and spread
knowledge produced by universities to global communities (Masterson 2011 in Lee and Park
2011). Indeed, reflecting the importance of web visibility of universities, a handful of online
rankings on web performance of universities have been introduced (Lee and Park 2011).
Webometrics is a science which studies the nature and characteristics of websites
(Anwarul Islam et al. 2011). Webometrics Ranking, which describes the performance of
academic institutions on the Web, is being a complement (or a proxy measure) to other World
University Rankings (Lee and Park 2011; (Aguillo et al. 2008) in Ortega and Aguillo 2009) as
the Times World University Ranking, QS World University Ranking, and Academic Ranking
of World Universities (see [Anowar et al. 2015; Sugak 2011]). The creators of Webometrics
Ranking consider that strong presence on Internet provides information on a wide range of
factors that can be clearly correlated with the overall quality of the university in question
(Rauhvargers 2013).
The Webometrics ranking aims to promote open archives initiatives, electronic access
to scientific publications and other academic materials (Anowar et al. 2015; Dahmane et al.
2013). The objective of this ranking is to order the maximal number of universities and find the
best of them. The results of analysis by Webometrics are updated twice a year: in January and
July (Sugak 2011; Sabastian et al., 2008). 25000 universities all over the world were analyzed
in January 2015.
The Webometrics Ranking provides a quantitative analysis of Higher Education
Institutions visibility and activity on the Web (Dahmane et al. 2013). It orders the universities
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according to four main web characteristics (indicators) from their institutional web domain
(Ortega and Aguillo 2009).
Important changes have been introduced in the Webometrics Ranking methodology, in
indicators, their names, and their weight (see [Anowar et al. 2015; Rauhvargers 2013; Boutin
et al. 2012; Sugak 2011; Ortega and Aguillo 2009]).
The current composite indicator is now built as follows (Webometrics 2015): a)
Visibility (Impact): the number of external inlinks that the University webdomain receives from
third parties. The link visibility data is collected from the two most important providers of this
information : Majestic SEO and Ahrefs; b) Activity: Presence (the total number of webpages
hosted in the main webdomain, including all the subdomains and directories of the university
as indexed by Google), Openness (the number of rich files as pdf, doc, docx and ppt) published
during the 2008-2012 period in dedicated websites according to the academic search engine
Google Scholar) and Excellence (the number of academic papers being part of the 10 % most
cited papers in their respective scientific fields, the data provider SCImago group supplied non-
zero values for more than 5200 universities for the period 2003-2010).
We can represent the formula used to calculate the university ranking as:
Final score=[(Impact)/2+(Presence+Openness+Excellence)/2].
The bigger the value of the final score (rank sum), the lower (better) is the final place of
the analyzed university in the ranking. If the final score of some universities coincide, they have
the same number in the ranking (International Experience in Sugak 2011).
The Webometrics Ranking can be influenced not only by geographical proximity, use
of English, and regional academic collaborations (Lee and Park 2011), but also by the active
presence of these universities on the Internet (Sugak 2011). If oldness, reputation and
demography can change the Webometrics Ranking of University websites, there are many (open
source) tools that permit enhancing the result.
The leadership of many universities do not pay much attention to the creation and
development of their websites (Sugak 2011), while they must have a strategy of visibility and
content development (Aourag and Sellami 2014) to enhance their reputation (Masterson 2011
in Lee and Park 2011). In addition, some officials say that there was an improvement in the
classification of certain universities without taking into account changes in the Webometrics
ranking and without checking causes of each progression.
In Algeria, the concept of webometrics is familiar and almost no work has been done in
this country. This work aims to answer these questions: How to read and improve the
Webometrics Ranking? What are the factors that influence web visibility of higher education
institutions? What is the place of Algerian academic websites in Webometrics Ranking and
what are the priorities and tools to increase their visibility?
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2. Methods and Material
First, the recent webometrics ranking is read and the best Algerian academic websites
are consulted. Then, an evaluation grid is produced. Other parameters are also selected
(Webometrics rank, pagerank, socialrank, etc.). Then, the data is collected by consulting all of
those websites. Thus, usable tables in R see Annex 1 and Annex 2) are obtained and Statistical
analyses were conducted. Finally, the results obtained are discussed and interpreted.
The online consultation of sites and data collection were performed on consecutive days
during the third week of January 2015, which also coincides with the collection of data by
Webometrics Lab, to eliminate the effect of the time factor.
Different types of parameters were selected: rankings (Webometrics ranking, Alexa,
pagerank and socialrank), features (number of sub-domains, languages of the main site, the
existence of open access journal, the availability of a library catalogue, the presence of an
institutional repository site and a platform for e-learning, etc.) and popularity on the most
popular social media in Algeria.
Free online tools were also used to collect the data of the other parameters: SocialRank
(www.socialrank.fr) PageRank (www.calcul-pagerank.fr), Global Rank and Rank in Algeria
(www.alexa.com), number of pages hosted on the site and number of pages viewed monthly
(urlmetriques.co).
For digital social networks, we have considered only the accounts of the main website
of each university, on the most popular social media in Algeria (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube
and Google plus). The data (number of mentions “likes” on Facebook, the number of follower
on Twitter, subscribers on YouTube channel and Google Plus) are collected by visiting different
accounts on these social media. In the absence of official pages on Facebook (and others
accounts) of many higher education institutions, we took into account the pages created by
students on behalf of their institutions.
Once the data are collected and transformed into a table (*.csv) operable under R,
statistical analysis (comparison of means and percentages, correlation matrices, hierarchical
clustering, ...) were performed. Data was analyzed using the RStudio (version 0.98.1062), with
the following libraries: corrplot, prettyR, FactoMineR, and psy.
Then, the existence of correlations is checked between indicators of Webometrics
Ranking and factors such as the number of subdomains, the number of pages (indexed by
Google), the number of pages viewed monthly (PVM) and popularity on digital social networks
(Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Youtube).
Algerian academic websites are then divided into two categories or groups (group A
gathering the first 41 sites and group B containing the 42 sites listed in the last rows). Then, a
comparison of averages and percentages is made based on several criteria: the number of
subdomains, use of e-learning platforms, use of social networks, etc. Compare higher education
institutions within a same country can minimize the effect of other socio-economic and cultural
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factors. This comparative study helps to better understand the factors influencing the ranking
and help senior educational institutions misclassified (or not yet visible on the Web) to choose
the right tools and a strategy of development of their websites.
Finally, a factorial correspondence analysis is conducted to know the tool (s) that best
contribute to hoist the forefront Algerian higher education institutions.
3. Results and Discussion
A total of 83 Algerian academic websites classified by Webometrics Ranking were
analyzed. Among 25,000 universities in the world, no Algerian institution is in the Top1000.
However, only two universities appeared in the Top2000.
1- 3.1. Place of Algeria academic websites
The Djillali Liabes University of Sidi-Bel-Abbes (UDL) is the first nationally by
winning the 1781th position in the world ranking. It is followed by the University of Ouargla
(UKMO) in 1798th rank and Abu-Bekr-Belkaid University of Tlemcen (UABBT) in the 2287th
place (Fig.1).
Fig. 1. Positioning in Webometrics Ranking (January 215) of the best Algerian universities

UDL (Djillali Liabes University of Sidi Bel Abbes) UKMO (University of Ouargla) UABBT
(University of Tlemcen) and USTHB (University of Houari Boumediene).
This figure shows that some universities have improved their rankings by the Impact
indicator (as UDL), but some others are better ranked by their Openness (such UKMO) and /
or their Presence (UABBT), while others are due to their Excellence (as USTHB). Therefore,
priorities change from one university to another. To get an overall idea, it is useful to represent
the data as boxplots (fig. 2). So, The priority of visibility's strategy may change from one
Institution to another.
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Fig. 2. Boxplots of Global Rank, Presence, Impact, Openness, and Excellence Ranks calculated
by Webometrics Ranking in July 2014 (G4, P4, I4, O4, and E4) and January 2015 (G5, P5, I5,
O5, and E5) of Algerian Higher Education Institutions.

This figure shows that the Algerian higher education institutions must increase their
presence and impact to improve their webometrics positioning (fig. 2).
The average of webometrics ranking (in January 2015) of Algerian academic websites
is 12863±6489 to 25000 institutions ranked in the world (it was 12150±6115 to 22123 in July
2014).
By studying the confidence intervals, we find that 95 per cent of Algerian academic
websites can be classified (with a 95 % of chance) between the 11467th and 14259th places.
Half of the Algeria Higher Education Institutions are placed between the 6648 and
18118 ranks (Global Rank). 50 per cent of these institutions are placed between 7257 and 19560
rows according to Presence indicator, between 11814 and 18120 according to Impact, between
5616 and 13206 for the Openness while they are between the 3200th and 5414th depending
Excellence.
These results do not necessarily mean that the Algerian Higher Education Institutions
have more Openness than Impact and more Excellence than Presence. In fact, by reading the
Webometrics ranking, we find that among the 83 Algerian Higher Education Institutions, 30
have the same Openness than 11794 (25000-13206) institutions classified in the world, and 41
of them the same Excellence as that of 19586 (25000-5414) institutions. Mr Isidro Aguillo
(from Webometrics Lab) says that, for this edition of Webometrics Ranking (January 2015), the
rank 5414 means that University have not any Excellence!
For the edition of January 2015, the average overall rank is 6000 (the last row is 12000).
This average is 9809 for the Presence indicator (the last rank is 19618), 9701 for the Impact
Indicator (where the last row is 23042), 6603 for the opening flag (the last row is 13206) and
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for 2707 Excellence indicators (the last row is 5414). The mean of the four indicators is 7205
(14410/2). We can consider this value as the average rank of the international classification
webometrics January 2015 (for Mr Isidro F. Aguillo, the average can 1000 to 2000).
The average rank of Algerian higher education institutions is 2863 ± 6489, which is
below the international average rank. Indeed, many establishments Algerian higher education
does not have items in the top 10 newspapers in each search field (Excellence indicator).
Therefore, these institutions should encourage scientific production in open access (Dahmane
et al. 2013) to gain position in the ranking Higher (Anowar et al. 2015).
2- 3.2. Correlations between Global Rank and its indicators
To better facilitate the reading of webometrics ranking, we subtracted the number of the
ranking (“G5”, “P5”, “I5”, “O5” and “E5”) of each Higher Education Institutions in the latest
rank nationally or internationally (5414 for Openness indicator for example). The results of this
subtraction (“G5.b”, “P5.b”', “I5.b”, “O5.b” and “E5.b”) represent faithfully the score (or note)
won by each institution (fig. 3). So instead of having negative correlations (with the number of
pages for example), we obtain positive correlations which is easier to grasp. This method avoids
the use of tools used by Webometrics Lab and redo the same work to collect data.
If for each indicator, we multiply the score by the weight, we get the final score weight
(“G5.c”, “P5.c”', “I5.c”, “O5.c” and “E5.c”).
Fig. 3. Global score and indicators with their weight (webometrics ranking, January 2015
edition) of Algerian Higher Education Institutions.

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Fig. 4. Global score and indicators without weight (webometrics ranking, January 2015 edition)
of Algerian Higher Education Institutions.

To better identify the indicators that have influence over the results of webometrics
ranking of Algerian academic websites, a Correlation Matrix was performed (fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Correlations matrix between the Global Rank “G5” (Webometrics Ranking, January
2015 edition) of the 83 Algerian academic websites and its four indicators (Impact “I5”,
Presence "P5", Openness "O5", and Excellence "E5") with (.b) and without (.c) their weights.

These correlations' matrix shows that the Global Rank of Algerian academic websites
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are more correlated with Impact than Excellence, Presence and Openness. There are positive
correlations between Impact and Excellence, and between Openness and Presence.
It is especially the impact and Excellence indicators that enabled Algerian academic
sites to be evaluated as well. But, be aware that there are interactions between the four indicators
(table 1). Indeed, the launch, for example, of a quality open access journal helps increase the
number of pages, number of readers and the number of backlinks.
Table 1: Interactions between the four indicators (Impact “I5”, Openness “O5”, Presence “P5”,
and Excellence “E5”) of Webometrics Ranking (January 2015 edition) of Algerian academic
websites.
Df Sum of Sq RSS AIC F value Pr(>F) signification
I5:O5 1 28896065 51480131 1117.0 98.5207 2.003e-15 0,***
I5:P5 1 24658969 51480131 1117.0 70.7926 1.620e-12 0,***
I5:E5 1 32585739 51480131 1117.0 132.7961 < 2e-16 0,***
P5:O5 1 10307363 51480131 1117.0 19.2765 3.557e-05 0,***
P5:E5 1 11068787 51480131 1117.0 21.0905 1.679e-05 0,***
O5:E5 1 12817391 51480131 1117.0 25.527 2.861e-06 0,***

3.2.1. Impact
The web links between sites or pages are analogous to the citations in published papers
(Junping et al. 2004). In some countries, a strong correlation was found between links and
journal citations (Ortega and Aguillo 2009). Indeed, external links are recognizing the
institutional prestige, the academic performance, the value of the information, and the
usefulness of the services as introduced in the webpages according to the criteria of millions of
web editors from all over the world (Webometrics 2015). Consequently, external backlinks (or
in-links) count can be a better evaluation measure for university websites than the Web Impact
Factors (Qiu et al. 2004).
In Algeria, according Aourag and Sellami (2014), there are deficiencies in the impact
parameters (backlinks) and institutional repositories. Indeed, the best Algerian academic
websites have a site for the institutional repository and open access journal (see fig. 8).
3.2.2. Presence
Some countries had higher scores of web visibility in all indicators because of
technological development and the production of international content (Lee and Park 2011;
Sugak 2011; Ortega and Aguillo 2009), and other factors (cf. Boutin et al. 2012).
Quality of education provided and academic prestige are correlated well by
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Webometrics ranking. But other non-academic variables need to be taken into account also
(Anowar et al. 2015).
For Algerian academic websites, the Global Rank (fig. 6) is not only correlated with the
number of pages hosted by the domain as indexed by Google, but also with the number of
external backlinks, the number of ''monthly viewed pages'', and the PageRank. This Global
Rank is feebly correlated with popularity on social media (especially Facebook).
Fig. 6. Principal Components Analysis (pca) of others factors that may influence rank of
Algerian academic websites (webometrics ranking, January 2015 edition).

The Global Rank is also correlated with ''Global Rank'' and ''Rank in Algeria'' calculated
by Alexa. Therefore, Algerian academic websites must improve their rankings by increasing the
number of web pages and providing interesting content continually updated.
Equally, there are positive correlations between the Global Rank and the existence of e-
learning platforms, catalogues of libraries, journals and institutional repositories (fig. 6).
 3.2.2.1. Number of Web pages
In this study, we fond that there are highly significant difference between best and words
Algerian academic websites according to the RankInter (international rank) calculated by
Alexa.com (table 2). To increase Web visibility, webmasters should enrich the site by more web
pages of useful content to make them more attractive internationally (Tafaroji et al. 2014) and
use an SEO (Search Engine Optimizer). An interesting and regularly updated content, inbound
links from a good rating page (Prat 2009).
Providing a variety of information and a wide collection of professional updated
resources in universities will attract more users and visitors, increase the visibility and the
number of inbound links. Providing a site-map for the university website could help to index
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