Webometrics Ranking Web of Universities 2024 | Must-know for Students

• Publisher: Webometrics, Spain
• Latest ranking publication date: 12 July, 2024
• Publication frequency: Twice yearly
• Geographic focus: Global
• Ranking type: University rankings.
• Year of first publication: 2004
• 11989 universities in ranking

Webometrics Ranking Web of Universities is a ranking of over 31000 universities based on their web publications. The initial idea behind the ranking, and the raison d’être it maintains today, is to encourage open publication of research and improve web presence of academic and research institutions. It is updated twice a year, in January and July. Webometrics rankings is produced by Cybermetrics Lab, part of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), a.k.a. the Spanish National Research Council.

Countless people use the internet without paying much attention to how it works and why, but for the researchers at Cybermetrics Lab it’s the other way around. Their understanding of the strings which weave the net has resulted in a surprisingly coherent ranking that, despite using completely different criteria, generally results in a ranking not entirely dissimilar from those rankings using academic surveys such as QS and THE. And the Webometrics results are very much in tune with rankings whose main focus is research.

As a little plus, if you are curious to know how your uni-to-be ranks in relation to others in the same country or region, it’s very easy to filter the ranking results on the Webometrics’ site to find the answer to what you want to know.

Types of Data Collected Directly by the Publisher

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External databases/data providers used

Ahrefs Majestic Google Scholar Profiles SCImago

Criteria for including/excluding universities

Schools excluded from the list: diploma-mills"

Criteria Classification

fake or dubious institutions

• Research publications and citations
• Academic reputation - survey or other
• Student Survey
• Internationalization (% of foreign staff/students/exchange)
• Employer reputation survey or Salary data

Methodology

https://www.webometrics.info/en/Methodology

Rating

2.0 / 5.0

Popularity

Google results for: Webometrics "Ranking Web of Universities": 199000

PROS

2

CONS

• non-subjective criteria
• largest number of institutions of any current ranking (12000 rated out of 31000

Practical use

The biggest issue people have with this ranking is the criteria used. In fact, the Cybermetrics Lab team addresses most of the criticism directly in their methodology. If you read that methodology carefully, (at times it’s a little unclear due to language issues - the Spanish version is no longer available online and the English version could stand for a revision by a native speaker) they make a point of explaining how a university can improve their ranking simply by taking specific measures with their website and putting effort into their research while making the resulting publications openly available. They aim for transparency as to their intentions and give advice as to how every institution can improve in their ranking. Kudos for that.

Criticism

In a way, the researchers behind Webometrics want to help change the world; the academic and scientific communities’ world, to be more precise. They believe that the knowledge resulting from research conducted at a university should be available to all. They also stress the importance of every institution’s web presence in making that possible and, with regards to that presence, they even offer suggestions (or instructions) on best practices for websites. That being said, Web Presence as such no longer figures as a specific factor among the criteria used in Webometrics’ ranking and yet is an integral part of the ranking in general.

The current criteria and the corresponding weighting used to create the ranking is as follows:

• VISIBILITY: Web contents impact 50%
• TRANSPARENCY (or OPENNESS): Top cited researchers 10%
• EXCELLENCE (or SCHOLAR): Top cited papers 40%

The web contents impact is gauged according to the number of external networks (subnets) linked to the institution's web pages. That number is then normalized and the maximum value is chosen.