Web Impact Factor (WIF) and link analysis of Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs): a webometric study.

Maharana, Rabindra K. ; Panda, K.C. ; Sahoo, J. 等

Introduction

The World Wide Web has now become one of the main sources of information on academic and research activities and therefore it is an excellent platform to test new methods of evaluating webometric activities. Webometric studies have focused their analyses mainly in the performance of the academic web domains, because academic institutions like colleges and universities are stable and well-defined institutions on the Web since long time ago. Furthermore, this interest is due to the possibility of building web indicators which explain the academic activity and production (Scharnhorst and Wouters, 2006; Thelwall, 2001, 2002). This has produced several studies that compare the academic web development in different countries through web indicators (Ingwersen, 1998; Smith, 1999) or through visualization (Heimeriks and Van Den Besselaar, 2006; Polanco et. al., 2001).

Academic institutions, web sites, in many countries, are large multifaceted communication devices, and are increasingly used for a wide variety of purposes, from attracting new students to providing online library catalogues. In terms of research, academic institutions, web sites can announce the existence and promote the achievements of individuals, research groups, institutes and departments. They can also disseminate their findings, either by hosting online articles or by publishing summaries, data sets or tools. The pages themselves can be created centrally, by administrators or webmasters, or locally by individuals for themselves or their research team or projects. Potential benefits of an effective web presence include greater research impact, attracting students, media interest and commercial contacts. In this context, it is quite logical to investigate the measures of the effectiveness of web sites, both to study the communication activity that they represent and to build useful evaluation metrics (Vaughan and Thelwall, 2005).

Concept of Webometrics

The Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science defines a web page as "an electronic document written in HTML script, stored on a Web server and accessible using Web browser software at a unique Internet address (URL), usually one of a group of related, interlinked files that together comprise a Web site. A Web page may include formatted text, graphic material, audio and/or video elements, and links to other files on the Internet" (DLIS).

The term, 'webometric' was coined from two English words i.e. "web" & "metrics". The word 'web' is the short of World Wide Web and 'metrics' denotes the mathematical theory of measurement. The ODLIS defines webometrics as "description and evaluation of the impact of the Internet as a scholarly communication tool, primarily by means of quantitative analysis of web-based scholarly and scientific communications" (ODLIS). Sometimes it is used synonymously with 'cybermetrics'. Simply, Webometrics, therefore, is the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the Web, drawing on bibliometric and informetric approaches.

Ramesh Babu, Jeyshankar and Nageswara Rao (2010) defined 'webometrics' as a quantitative study of web-related phenomena. The webometrics study could be applied to web with commercial search engines providing the raw data.

Bojorneborne (2004), on the other hand, defined webometrics as "the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the web, drawing on bibliometric and informatic approaches. This definition covers both the construction and usage aspects of the web, which embrace the following four key domains of webometrics study:

* Web page content analysis.

* Weblink structure analysis (e.g. hyperlink, self link and external link).

* Web usage analysis (e.g. exploting log files for users searching and browsing behaviour).

* Web technology analysis (including search engine performance).

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)

Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) are a group of 16 autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education and learning established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Parliament of India. The IITs were created primarily to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of the country.

The details of all the existing IITs are listed in Table 1, which gives a brief sketch of all 16 IITs in India with their year of establishment, located city/town with URL.

Table 1 List of IITs in India (chronological order)

Name of the  Year   Short    City/Town     State/UT
IIT            of    Name
             Estd.

IIT           1951  IITKGP  Kharagpur    West Bengal
Kharagpur

IIT Bombay    1958  IITB    Mumbai       Maharashtra

IIT Madras    1959  IITM    Chennai      Tamil Nadu

IIT Kanpur    1959  IITK    Kanpur       Uttar
                                         Pradesh

IIT Delhi     1963  IITD    New Delhi    New Delhi

IIT           1994  IITG    Guwahati     Assom
Guwahati

IIT Roorkee   2001  IITR    Roorke       Uttarakhand

IIT Ropar     2008  IITRPR  Rupnagar     Punjab

IIT           2008  IITBBS  Bhubaneswar  Odisha
Bhubaneswar

IIT           2008  IITH    Hyderabad    Andhra
Hyderabad                                Pradesh

IIT           2008  IITGN   Gandhinagar  Gujarat
Gandhinagar

IIT Patna     2008  IITP    Patna        Bihar

IIT           2008  IITJ    Jodhpur      Rajasthan
Rajasthan

IIT Mandi     2009  IIT     Mandi        Himachal
                    Mandi                Pradesh

IIT Indore    2009  IITI    Indore       Madhya
                                         Pradesh

IIT (BHU)     2010  IITBHU  Varanasi     Uttar
Varanasi                                 Pradesh

Name of the          URL
IIT

IIT          www.iitkap.ernet.in/
Kharagpur

IIT Bombay   www.iitb.ac.in/

IIT Madras   www.iitm.ac.in/

IIT Kanpur   www.iitk.ac.in/

IIT Delhi    www.iitd.ac.in/

IIT          www.iitg.ac.in
Guwahati

IIT Roorkee  www.iitr.ac.in/

IIT Ropar    www.iitrpr.ac.in/

IIT          www.iitbbs.ac.in/
Bhubaneswar

IIT          www.iith.ac.in/
Hyderabad

IIT          www.iitgn.ac.in/
Gandhinagar

IIT Patna    www.iitp.ac.in/

IIT          www.iitk.ac.in/iiti/
Rajasthan

IIT Mandi    www.iitmandi.ac.in/

IIT Indore   www.iiti.ac.in/

IIT (BHU)    www.itbhu.ac.in/
Varanasi

Review of Literature

The Web provides a fertile ground for the extension of the bibliometric techniques developed for the conventional print environment. A number of studies have been published, establishing the concept of webometrics (Larson, 1996; Almind and Ingwersen, 1997; Rousseau, 1997; Smith and Thelwall, 2002; Bjorneborn, 2004; Bjorneborn and Ingwersen, 2004). In particular, the WIF has been proposed by Ingwersen (1998) as a method of gauging the influence of web sites on each other, and of analysing links between institutions. He proposed Web Impact Factors by analogy with Journal Impact Factors (JIF), and Mike Thelwall has developed the WIF in several papers in order to find possible correlations to traditional research productivity indicators (Bjorneborn, 2004).

The WIF as a useful measure of the overall influence of a web site, using the backlinks or inlinks (links coming into a site from other sites) to the web site, has been proposed independently by two bibliometric researchers. It is an interesting illustration of the dominance of English language research publishing that the concept of WIF was published first in a Spanish language journal by Rodriguez i Gairin (1997), but was not widely noticed until published in an English language journal by Ingwersen (1998).

Thelwall (2002) in his study entitled, "Conceptualizing documentation on the web: an evaluation of different heuristic-based models for counting links between university websites" states that the earlier weblink studies have used the webpage as the primary indivisible source document for counting purposes. He defined three alternative heuristics for the educational arena based upen the directory, the domain and the whole university site, and examined 108 UK university institutional websites.

Noruzi (2005) invested the web impact factor for the Iranian universities and introduced a new system of measurement. Ramesh Babu, Jeyshankar and Nageswara Rao (2010) studied the websites of central universities of India. Ortega and Aguillo (2008) have analyzed the Visualization of the Nordic academic web: link analysis using social network tools.

Objectives

The basic objective of the present study is to formulate a methodology for the calculation of web impact factor (WIF) of Top Level Domains (TLDs), Second or Top-Level Domains (STLDs) of the Indian IITs. The other objective includes:

* To identify and analyze the websites of all IITs of India;

* To identify the domain systems of all the IIT websites in India as per the web pages;

* To calculate the number of link pages, number of self link pages, external and internal link pages of the IIT websites and rank them according to their coverage and

* To calculate the simple, self link and external web impact factor of all the 16 IITs included in the present study.

Scope

The present study makes a webometric analysis of IITs websites in India. The study examined the websites of 16 IITs in the country and aimed at to establish a kind of academic ranking of these websites by measuring their web impact factor. The ranking of websites will help the reader to compare and identify IITs websites in India according to their WIF.

Methodology of the Study

When undertaking a WIF study, it is necessary to select a suitable search engine that will count the number of pages in the web site studied, and the number of pages linking to the web site. It should have a large database, covering as much of the Web as possible (Smith, 1999). Currently, AltaVista satisfies these requirements most fully, with one of the largest databases and search commands both for links and for number of pages at a web site (Notess, 2002).

Thus, the present study uses altavista search engine (www.altavista.com) for collecting the required data. Altavista's advanced queries were used to collect the approximate number of pages in each websites. The following search statement are used to collect data for each of the 16 IITs websites as:

* domain: www.iitb.ac.in-this will extract the number of web pages at the website under www.iitb.ac.in.

* linkdomain: www.iitb.ac.in-it will retrieve total number of web pages linking to the websites under www.iitb.ac.in.

* linkdomain: www.iitb.ac.in AND domain: www.iitb.ac.in-it will provides a complete report of number of web pages under www.iitb.ac.in which provides hyperlinks to this website www.iitb.ac.in; which is called self-links pages (links from the same website).

* Linkdomain: www.iitb.ac.in AND NOT domain: www.iitb.ac.in-which provides the report of number of pages not under www.iitb.ac.in. But this website provide hyperlinks to www.iitb.ac.in. It is called external-link pages.

* Linkdomain: www.iitb.ac.in NOT domain: www.iitb.ac.in-it reveals the number of links ncoming from other websites.

Results and Discussion

Distribution of Data by Domain Name

Table 2 shows the classification of IITs by their domain name, further, it shows that only two types of domain extensions were observed in the present study of the IITs. Almost all IITs, except IIT-KGP websites have '.ac.in' (93.75 per cent) extension where as only IIT-KGP web site has '.ernet.in' (6.25 per cent) extension respectively.

Table 2 Classification of IITs by their domain

Sl. No.    Domain     No. of IITs  Percentage (10%)

1.       .ac.in              15             93.75

2.       .ernet.in            1              6.25

Total                        16               100

Distribution of Data by SWIF

Table 3 arranges the rank of the IITs in India according to their simple web impact factor (SWIF). Simple Web Impact Factor has been calculated by the following formula:

Table 3 Simple web impact factor for IITs

Name of the IIT    NWP (A)  LWP (B)  SWIF (B/A)  Ranked by SWIF

IIT Kharagpur           15     2053     136.866               1

IIT Madras            4846    10169       2.098               2

IIT Bhubaneswar        122      227       1.861               3

IIT Bombay            5576     8470       1.519               4

IIT Guwahati           935     1093       1.168               5

IIT Patna              268      292       1.089               6

IIT Ropar              267      198       0.741               7

IIT Indore             226      148       0.654               8

IIT Delhi            10983     6943       0.632               9

IIT Hyderabad          639      382       0.597              10

IIT Mandi              300      145       0.483              11

IIT Gandhinagar        627      251       0.401              12

IIT Rajasthan          461      154       0.334              13

IIT Roorkee          12596     3929       0.311              14

IIT Kanpur           70110    19459       0.277              15

IIT (BHU) Varanas     3099      615       0.198              16

NWP= No. of Web Page, LWP= Link Web Page, SWIF= Simple Web Impact Factor

Simple Web Impact Factor (SWIF) = B/A

Where, A= Number of web page and

B= Link web page.

IIT, Kharagpur occupies the first place with 2053 link pages and 15 numbers of web pages with 136.866 SWIF, followed by IIT-Madras and Bhubaneswar occupies second and third ranks having 2.098 and 1.861 SWIF respectively. Though IIT-Delhi (10983), IIT-Roorke (12596) and IIT-Kanpur (70110) have more number of web pages compared to all other IITs, but still they have occupied 9th, 14th and 15th position in the ranking respectively as because their number of link pages are very less compared to their number of web pages.

Distribution of data by SLWIF

The self link web impact factor of IITs is shown in Table 4, which is calculated by adopting the following formula:

Table 4 Self-link web impact factor for IITs

Name of the IIT     NWP (A)  SLWP (C)  SLWIF (C/A)  Ranked by SLWIF

IIT Kharagpur            15        13        0.867                1

IIT Guwahati            935       525        0.562                2

IIT Patna               268       147        0.549                3

IIT Hyderabad           639       311        0.487                4

IIT Mandi               300       138         0.46                5

IIT Indore              226        97         0.43                6

IIT (BHU) Varanasi     3099      1280        0.414                7

IIT Ropar               267       110        0.412                8

IIT Gandhinagar         627       250        0.399                9

IIT Roorkee           12596      4470        0.355               10

IIT Madras             4846      1710        0.353               11

IIT Bombay             5576      1710        0.307               12

IIT Delhi             10983      2720        0.248               13

IIT Bhubaneswar         122        28         0.23               14

IIT Kanpur            70110     10800        0.155               15

IIT Rajasthan           461        51        0.111               16

Note: NWP= No. of Web Page, SLWP= Simple Link Web Page, SLWIF= Simple
Link Web Impact Factor

Self Link Web Impact Factor (SLWIF) = C/A

Where, C= Simple Link Web Page (SLWP) and

A= Number of web page

Analysis of the resultant data shows that, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur occupies first place with 15 NWP, 13 SLWP with 0.867 SLWIF followed by IIT-Guwahati and IIT-Patna remained at the second and third position with SLWIF of 0.562 and 0.549 respectively. Similarly, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (0.487), Mandi (0.46), Indore (0.43), Varanasi (0.414), Ropar (0.412), Gandhinagar (0.399), Roorkee (0.355) stood at fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth positions respectively.

Distribution of data by EWIF

Table 5 shows the rank distribution of all IITs according to their external web impact factor (EWIF) which is calculated by taking the following formula:

Table 5 External link web impact factor for IITs

Name of the IIT    NWP (A)  ELWP (D)  EWIF (D/A)  Ranked by EWIF

IIT Kharagpur           15        13       0.867               1

IIT (BHU) Varanas     3099       680        0.22               2

IIT Roorkee          12596      2190       0.174               3

IIT Hyderabad          639        91       0.143               4

IIT Bombay            5576       758       0.136               5

IIT Bhubaneswar        122        11       0.091               6

IIT Ropar              267        19       0.072               7

IIT Delhi            10983       762        0.07               8

IIT Guwahati           935        53       0.057               9

IIT Kanpur           70110      3830       0.055              10

IIT Indore             226        11       0.049              11

IIT Mandi              300        13       0.044              12

IIT Gandhinagar        627        25        0.04              13

IIT Rajasthan          461        17       0.037              14

IIT Madras            4846       158       0.033              15

IIT Patna              268         7       0.027              16

Note: NWP= No. of Web Page, ELWP= External-Link Web Page,
EWIF= External-link Web Impact Factor

External Web Impact Factor (EWIF) = D/A

Where, D= External link web page and

A= Number of web pages

It is clearly visible from Table 5 that again IIT-Kharagpur is having 13 ELWP and 15 NWP with 0.867 EWIF and occupies the first position among all the 16 IITs; followed by IIT-Varanasi with 0.22 EWIF. Though IIT-Kanpur stood at the 10th position having maximum number of external-link web pages (3830) compared to other IITs but its EWIF is too low compared to its number of web pages which is quite insignificant.

Distribution of data by RWIF

Table 6 exhibits the rank distribution of all the 16 IITs according to their revised web impact factor (RWIF) which has been calculated by putting the following formula:

Table 6 Revised link web impact factor for IITs of India

Name of the IIT     NWP (A)  ILWP (E)  RWIF (E/A)  Ranked by RLWIF

IIT Kharagpur            15        13       0.867                1

IIT (BHU) Varanasi     3099       672       0.217                2

IIT Roorkee           12596      2210       0.176                3

IIT Hyderabad           639       107       0.168                4

IIT Bombay             5576       782       0.141                5

IIT Bhubaneswar         122        11       0.091                6

IIT Mandi               300        23       0.077                7

IIT Ropar               267        19       0.072                8

IIT Delhi             10983       772       0.071                9

IIT Kanpur            70110      4100       0.059               10

IIT Indore              226        13       0.058               11

IIT Guwahati            935        52       0.056               12

IIT Rajasthan           461        20       0.044               13

IIT Gandhinagar         627        25        0.04               14

IIT Madras             4846       160       0.034               15

IIT Patna               268         7       0.027               16

Note: NWP= No. of Web Page, ILWP-Internal Link Web Page,
RWIF= Revised Web Impact Factor

Revised Web Impact Factor (RWIF) = E/A

Where, E= Internal Link Web Page and

A= Number of Web Page.

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur again ranked first position with 15 web pages, 13 in-link web pages and 0.867 RWIF; followed by Indian Institute of Technology Varanasi with 3099 NWP, 672 ILWP and 0.217 RWIF. IIT-Roorkee occupied 3rd position with 0.176 RWIF. Though Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur is again having maximum number of in-link web pages (4100) compared to all IITs, but it stood at 10th position due to its less (0.059) RWIF as compared to in-link web pages which seems to be quite insignificant.

Daily Page Views of IITs Vs. Daily Search Percentage

The daily page views of the Indian Institute of Technologies have also been analyzed. The graphs were obtained from Alexa (Alexa web analyst). The graphs of such views are depicted as follows with the percentage. Due to less number of views, Alexa is unable to create the viewer's graph of IIT-Ropar, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Patna, Rajasthan. It is also important to note that, Alexa was also unable to establish graph views with the web address of www.iitd.ac.in, however produced with the web address of www.iitd.ernet.in.

Table 7 Daily Search Percentage of the IITs

Name of    Last 30  Last 7   Yesterday    Mean     Rank
the IIT      days     days      site      site
             site     site    traffic   traffic
           traffic  traffic   (in %)     (in %)
           (in %)   (in %)

IIT           22.7     23.3         20       22     1
Madras

IIT           23.9       19       19.2     20.7     2
Bombay

IIT Delhi       23     21.5       16.7     20.4     3

IIT           21.7     22.5       11.1    18.44     4
Kanpur

IIT           17.4     14.3        7.1    12.94     5
Kharagpur

Findings and Conclusion

Web Impact Factor and link analysis of Indian Institute of Technologies is an unexplored area of webometic research. The present study, hopefully, provides a fair idea and information about the website of all the 16 IITs of the country. There is a scope for further webometric research in this area. The followings are the major findings of the present study:

* All most all the IITs except IIT-Kharagpur have "ac.in" extension.

* In all the analysis part such as SWIF, SLWIF, EWIF, RWIF IIT-Kharagpur occupies first position.

* IIT-Ropar, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Patna & Rajasthan has very less number of search positions which could not be tracked by Alexa Web Analyst.

* IIT-Madras stood at the first position at Daily search percentage of the IITs followed by IIT-Bombay, Delhi Kanpur & Kharagpur respectively.

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Rabindra K. Maharana

National Institute of Science Education and Research,, maharana.rabindra@gmail.com

K.C. Panda

Sambalpur University, krushna52@yahoo.co.in

J. Sahoo

Sambalpur University, jyotshna_sahoo@rediffmail.com

Maharana, Rabindra K.; Panda, K.C.; and Sahoo, J., "Web Impact Factor (WIF) and Link Analysis of Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs): A Webometric Study" (2012). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). Paper 789.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/789

Rabindra K. Maharana

Technician (Library)

National Institute of Science Education & Research (NISER), IOP Campus, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School

Bhubaneswar-751005

Prof. K. C. Panda

Professor & Head,

P.G. Dept. of Library & Information Science, Sambalpur University

Sambalpur-768019

Dr. (Mrs.) J. Sahoo

Lecturer, P.G. Dept. of Library & Information Science, Sambalpur University

Sambalpur-768019