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Do the Web sites of higher rated scholars have significantly more online impact?

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  • Mike Thelwall
  • Gareth Harries

Abstract

The quality and impact of academic Web sites is of interest to many audiences, including the scholars who use them and Web educators who need to identify best practice. Several large‐scale European Union research projects have been funded to build new indicators for online scientific activity, reflecting recognition of the importance of the Web for scholarly communication. In this paper we address the key question of whether higher rated scholars produce higher impact Web sites, using the United Kingdom as a case study and measuring scholars' quality in terms of university‐wide average research ratings. Methodological issues concerning the measurement of the online impact are discussed, leading to the adoption of counts of links to a university's constituent single domain Web sites from an aggregated counting metric. The findings suggest that universities with higher rated scholars produce significantly more Web content but with a similar average online impact. Higher rated scholars therefore attract more total links from their peers, but only by being more prolific, refuting earlier suggestions. It can be surmised that general Web publications are very different from scholarly journal articles and conference papers, for which scholarly quality does associate with citation impact. This has important implications for the construction of new Web indicators, for example that online impact should not be used to assess the quality of small groups of scholars, even within a single discipline.

Suggested Citation

  • Mike Thelwall & Gareth Harries, 2004. "Do the Web sites of higher rated scholars have significantly more online impact?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 55(2), pages 149-159, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:55:y:2004:i:2:p:149-159
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.10362
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    Cited by:

    1. Ho Fai Chan & Bruno S. Frey & Jana Gallus & Markus Schaffner & Benno Torgler & Stephen Whyte, 2014. "Do the best scholars attract the highest speaking fees? An exploration of internal and external influence," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 793-817, October.
    2. Mike Thelwall, 2012. "Journal impact evaluation: a webometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 429-441, August.
    3. Moosung Lee & Han Woo Park, 2012. "Exploring the web visibility of world-class universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(1), pages 201-218, January.
    4. Mike Thelwall & Alesia Zuccala, 2008. "A university-centred European Union link analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(3), pages 407-420, June.
    5. Kuang-hua Chen & Muh-chyun Tang & Chun-mei Wang & Jieh Hsiang, 2015. "Exploring alternative metrics of scholarly performance in the social sciences and humanities in Taiwan," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 97-112, January.
    6. Amalia Más-Bleda & Isidro F. Aguillo, 2013. "Can a personal website be useful as an information source to assess individual scientists? The case of European highly cited researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 51-67, July.
    7. Pardeep Sud & Mike Thelwall, 2014. "Linked title mentions: a new automated link search candidate," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 1831-1849, December.
    8. Amalia Mas-Bleda & Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha & Isidro F. Aguillo, 2014. "Do highly cited researchers successfully use the social web?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 337-356, October.
    9. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    10. Simone Belli & Carlos Gonzalo-Penela, 2020. "Science, research, and innovation infospheres in Google results of the Ibero-American countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 635-653, May.
    11. Seeber, Marco & Lepori, Benedetto & Lomi, Alessandro & Aguillo, Isidro & Barberio, Vitaliano, 2012. "Factors affecting web links between European higher education institutions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 435-447.

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