- Hyperlink Analysis - Merton & Garfield vs. Malinowski & MacRoberts Mike Thelwall Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group University of Wolverhampton, UK AoIR, Sept. 2004

Data sources for web use Web server logs Good source, but restricted to individual sites Hyperlinks Secondary source of information – few users actually create hyperlinks Commercial search engines can be used for raw data about the ‘whole’ Web Analogies with bibliometric citation studies Hyperlink studies will be discussed in this talk

What use is hyperlink data to qualitative researchers? Part of a mixed methodology Numbers to back up theories To obtain samples of types of Web pages for qualitative analyses Background information on how the Web is used

Data collection Web crawler AltaVista advanced queries linkdomain:aoir.org NOT domain:aoir.org Note: Google does not allow this kind of Boolean query

Lilia Efimova

Example Link Research Topic: University Web Site Interlinking A brief summary of recent research – over 50 papers published on this topic Note that this is a quantitative-driven research topic (loads of stats)

What do links signify? (Garfield- Merton vs. MacRoberts- Malinowski ) Counts of links to universities within a country can correlate significantly with measures of research productivity The significance of this result is in giving ‘permission’ to investigate the use of inter- university links for researching scholarly communication >> Links Associate with Research

Links to UK universities against their research productivity The reason for the strong correlation is the quantity of Web publication, not its quality This is different to citation analysis

Most links are only loosely related to research A random sample of links between UK university sites revealed over 90% had some connection with scholarly activity, including teaching and research Less than 1% were equivalent to citations A big difference to the similar field of citation analysis 50% Garfield-Merton and 50% MacRoberts- Malinowski?

Geographic Patterns Patterns in counts of links between university Web sites

Geography is important on the web

Geographic clustering on the web This is clearest for Scottish universities but also for other groupings, including Manchester-based universities Coherent clusters are difficult to extract because of overlapping research and geographic trends

A “pathfinder network” of UK university interlinking with geographic clusters indicated You are here

International Issues

Language on the web English the dominant language for Web sites in the Western EU In a typical country, 50% of pages are in the national language(s) and 50% in English Non-English speaking extensively interlink in English {Research with Rong Tang}

Mapping patterns of international communication Counts of links between Asia- Pacific universities are represented by arrow thickness. {Research with Alastair Smith, VUW, NZ}

Uses of hyperlink data for qualitative researchers Part of a mixed methodology Numbers to back up theories To obtain samples of types of Web pages for qualitative analyses Use in conjunction with content analysis Background information on how the Web is used Free info and software!