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A longitudinal study of academic webs: Growth and stabilisation

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  • Nigel Payne

    (University of Wolverhampton)

  • Mike Thelwall

    (University of Wolverhampton)

Abstract

As the web is continuously changing, perhaps growing exponentially since its inception, a major potential problem for webometrics is that web statistics may be obsolete by the time they are published in the academic literature. It is important therefore to know as much as possible about how the web is changing over time. This paper studies the UK, Australian and New Zealand academic webs from 2000 to 2005, finding that the number of static pages and links in each of the three academic webs appears to have stabilised as far back as 2001. This stabilisation may be partly due to increases in dynamic pages which are normally excluded from webometric analyses. Nevertheless, the results are encouraging evidence that webometrics for academic spaces may have a longer-term validity than would have been previously assumed.

Suggested Citation

  • Nigel Payne & Mike Thelwall, 2007. "A longitudinal study of academic webs: Growth and stabilisation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 71(3), pages 523-539, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:71:y:2007:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-007-1695-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-007-1695-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Judit Bar‐Ilan & Bluma C. Peritz, 2004. "Evolution, continuity, and disappearance of documents on a specific topic on the Web: A longitudinal study of “informetrics”," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 55(11), pages 980-990, September.
    2. Mike Thelwall & Rong Tang & Liz Price, 2003. "Linguistic patterns of academic Web use in Western Europe," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 56(3), pages 417-432, March.
    3. Mike Thelwall, 2002. "Conceptualizing documentation on the Web: An evaluation of different heuristic‐based models for counting links between university Web sites," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 53(12), pages 995-1005, October.
    4. Alastair Smith & Mike Thelwall, 2002. "Web Impact Factors for Australasian universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 54(3), pages 363-380, July.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Enrique Orduña-Malea & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2014. "Google Scholar Metrics evolution: an analysis according to languages," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(3), pages 2353-2367, March.
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    4. Enrique Orduna-Malea & Juan M. Ayllón & Alberto Martín-Martín & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2015. "Methods for estimating the size of Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 931-949, September.
    5. María Pinto & David Guerrero Quesada & Ximo Granell, 2014. "Dissemination of information and visibility of the European Higher Education Area through the websites of Spanish universities: a longitudinal metric analysis, 2007–2012," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1235-1255, February.
    6. Benedetto Lepori & Isidro F. Aguillo & Marco Seeber, 2014. "Size of web domains and interlinking behavior of higher education institutions in Europe," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 100(2), pages 497-518, August.
    7. Clarice Gameiro Fonseca Pachi & Jorge Futoshi Yamamoto & Anna Paula Amadeu Costa & Luis Fernandez Lopez, 2012. "Relationship between connectivity and academic productivity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(2), pages 265-278, November.
    8. Enrique Orduña-Malea & Adolfo Alonso-Arroyo & José-Antonio Ontalba-Ruipérez & Ferrán Catalá-López, 2023. "Evaluating the online impact of reporting guidelines for randomised trial reports and protocols: a cross-sectional web-based data analysis of CONSORT and SPIRIT initiatives," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 407-440, January.

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