Interesting data from Webometrics

The Webometrics rankings perform the invaluable function of ranking 27,000 plus universities or entities claiming to be universities around the world. Also, their Excellence indicator identifies those  institutions, 5,776 this year, with any claim to involvement in research.

Consequently, it has often been used in unofficial national rankings in countries, especially in Africa, where very few places can make it into the top 500 or 1,000 universities included in the better known international rankings.

However, there seems to be a universal law that when a ranking becomes significant it will have unintended and perverse consequences. In the UK we have seen massive inflation in the number of first and upper second class degrees partly because this is a n element in popular national rankings. Sophisticated campaigns can also produce  significant gains in the QS academic opinion survey which has a 40% weighting  and a few hundred strategic citations can boost the most unlikely universities in the research impact indicator of THE world and regional rankings.

Webometrics also has indicator that seems to be susceptible to bad practices. This is "Presence", the number of pages in the main webdomain including subdomains and file types such as rich files, with a 5% weighting. Apparently this can be easily manipulated. Unlike other rankings, Webometrics does not attempt to ignore this but has highlighted it in several recent tweets, which is helpful since it indicates who might be manipulating the variable. It is  possible that there might have been a misunderstanding of the Webometrics guidelines, an error somewhere, or perhaps some totally valid and innocent explanation. If the latter is the case iIwill be happy to publish a statement.

Here is a selection of universities with their world rank in the Webometrics Presence indicator. The overall rank is in brackets.

4.  University of Nairobi, Kenya (874)

5.  Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia (433)

9.  Federal university of Santa Catarina, Brazil  (439)

15.  Charles University in Prague (203)

17.  University of Costa Rica (885)

20.  University of the West Indies St Augustine (1792)

32.  National University of Honduras (3777)

40.  Mahidol University, Thailand (548)

55.  Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Indonesia  (6394)