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Sweepstakes or Strategy?: Enhancing Webometric Rankings of Universities in Kenya
Abstract
This chapter demonstrates that the Webometrics ranking of universities in Kenya is an inevitable product of strategic actions and not luck. The chapter specifically demystifies the Webometrics approach to ranking universities; analyses the trends of Webometrics ranking of Kenyan universities since 2013 when the old and new universities were chartered following the enactment of the Universities Act (2012); examines the extent to which stakeholders rely on Webometrics ranking to select universities to join, fund or collaborate with; and proposes strategic actions universities in Kenya can take to enhance their Webometrics ranking. The chapter relies on empirical research data collected from scholars, students and policymakers in Kenya collected through in-depth key informant interviews. Documentary analysis was used to collect additional data on the ranking of universities. This chapter contributes new knowledge to the understanding and application of the philosophy, approach and efficacy of Webometrics ranking of universities to enhance the scholarly performance of universities.
... The results indicated that Egypt had the highest number of universities included in the international rankings (QS & THE), followed by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and finally Qatar. Other studies to rankings universities [20][21] [22] [23]. ...
This paper investigates the competitiveness of Yemeni universities affiliated with the Ministry of Higher Education and its impact on economic and social competitiveness, as well as the growth of human capital and the creation of social knowledge. The study utilized data from the Information Technology Center at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Yemen, as well as the “AD SCIENTIFIC INDEX” world ranking dataset, to identify the most important indicators for ranking Yemeni universities. The research identified seven indicators for 78 Yemeni universities, both governmental and private, and used cluster analysis to reveal the best performers. The results showed that the University of Sana'a ranked first, followed by the University of Aden. The study recommends that Yemeni universities align their goals with the most important indicators based on international strategies and support scientific research through the support of scholars. The findings of this study can be used by Yemeni universities to improve their competitiveness and enhance their academic reputation
Accessibility evaluation is an important equity step in assessing effectiveness and usefulness of online learning materials for disabled students. With popular uptake of blended and online learning it is timely to evaluate the accessibility attained by universities in their websites and Learning Management Systems (LMS) .The present study considers this question for the period 2005 through 2015. Previous studies in this area have indicated that university websites have become gradually inaccessible, as the complexity of their content increases, and that the amount of attention being paid to this problem by the universities is low. This study employed a comparative quantitative method, and a random sample of universities’ websites was evaluated using the accessibility evaluation tool designed by AChecker. The inclusion of the specific universities chosen for this study was based on their ranking in the world, and/or in the Oceania and Arab regions. Moreover, the evaluation is organised by page type: homepage, administration page or course description/syllabus page. Thus, through a statistical and empirical study, we demonstrated that there was no significant improvement in the accessibility of universities’ web sites between 2005 and 2015. Furthermore, access to media and document files had the most influential accessibility errors. In addition, there were 27,308 (33%) total home page errors among the 180 evaluated pages from 60 of the top world, Oceania and Arab universities’ sites. There are no significant differences in accessibility level between top-ranking universities in developed or developing countries. Therefore, with participation rate at universities expanding world-wide and equity being a common corporate theme there is a growing need for universities to commit to and responsibly address accessibility to online learning materials for disabled students.
Universities' prospective student web pages aim to disseminate information about their academic and social opportunities to their stakeholders; therefore, they must be accessible, of high quality of use and reliable. This article presents the accessibility, usage performance, and security analysis of prospective student web pages of 330 universities from three continents, namely Europe, North America, and Oceania. For this purpose, university websites were selected based on the Webometrics ranking, and online automated test tools were used. The results showed that websites at universities in North America paid more attention to accessibility and quality of use on prospective student web pages, followed by Oceanian and European websites. Evaluated websites had low compliance levels according to the WCAG 2.0 guideline. No major problems were identified in terms of usability and security, but there were certain points for improvement. Moreover, we present and discuss recommendations to developers and administrators for websites to resolve accessibility, usability, and security breaches and provide information equally to all stakeholders. Hence, this analysis report provides feedback to web developers to improve accessibility, quality of use, and security issues of university websites and their prospective student web pages.
Research data management is an umbrella term used to describe activities related to the creation, organisation, structuring, naming, backing up, storage, conservation, and sharing of research data as well as all actions that guarantee security of research data. As is often the case, researchers from Sub-Saharan Africa are lagging behind their counterparts in developed countries in embracing the best practices of research data management. One of the factors to which this slow pace of adoption of research data management could be attributed, is inadequate research on the subject. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the quantity, quality, visibility and authorship of publications on research data management in Sub-Saharan Africa. Bibliometrics approaches were used to analyse publications on research data management from, and on, Sub-Saharan Africa which are currently indexed in Google Scholar. The index was chosen because it is free and is reputed to have liberal selection criteria which do not favour, or discriminate, any discipline or geographic regions. Data was retrieved from Google Scholar using Harzing’s “Publish or Perish” software and analysed using VOSviewer. The findings of the study revealed that the quantity, quality, visibility and authorship collaboration of scholarly publications on research data management in Sub-Saharan Africa is low. The findings may be used by libraries and research institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa to develop and promote best practices in research data management as a means of enhancing their research output and impact.
This study aims to examine the website analysis of top 15 Indian universities ranked in NIRF (National Institutes Ranking Framework). The study focused on research productivity and webometric analysis which examine the domain, domain age, external and internal links, whereas all three types of web impacts of all respondent websites have been analysed. Study also examine usage of websites by stakeholder from inside and outside the country. For measuring research productivity of the respondent's universities, researchers has approached the Scopus database and analysed the no. of papers published, total citations received and h-index of respondent's universities. The present study used various tools like ahrefs SEO, Alexa for collection of the data and examines websites of universities of India covered in this study.
This study aims to examine the website analysis of top 15 Indian universities ranked in NIRF (National Institutes Ranking Framework). The study focused on research productivity and webometric analysis which examine the domain, domain age, external and internal links, whereas all three types of web impacts of all respondent websites have been analysed. Study also examine usage of websites by stakeholder from inside and outside the country. For measuring research productivity of the respondent’s universities, researchers has approached the Scopus database and analysed the no. of papers published, total citations received and h-index of respondent’s universities. The present study used various tools like ahrefs SEO, Alexa for collection of the data and examines websites of universities of India covered in this study. Findings revealed that Anna University’s website having a highest page authority score that is 59 out of a total of 100. It was found from the study that “Anna University” having a highest web traffic, backlinks and referring domains whereas University of Delhi’s website achieved first Alexa traffic global rank while Savitribai Phule Pune University’s website achieved 1st Alexa traffic Indian rank. It was also found from the study that Bharathiar University’s website achieved first position in all three web impact factors SWIF, IWIF and EWIF. It is observed from the findings that highest research produced by Indian Institute of Science followed by University of Delhi and Manipal Academy of Higher Education.. Keyword: World Wild Web, Webometrics Analysis, Web Impact Factor, Traffic Rank, Web Evaluation, Link Analysis, Backlinks, Referring Domain, Page Authority, Alexa Rank, research productivity, h-index
Global university rankings continue to gain growing interest and have high visibility from all stakeholders. Of these, Webometrics Ranking (WR) faces many criticisms about its function. Some people believe WR evaluates only the websites of universities but not their global performance and impact as mentioned by WR authors. This stimulates us to examine the idea of using WR as a reliable academic ranking for the world universities. To test this hypothesis, we apply the WR results with two widely accepted indexes, i.e., the global university rankings and the bibliometrics. Therefore, the WR ranking of the Top 100 institutions are correlated with the corresponding values of six world ranking systems’ 2015 edition (ARWU, USNWR, QS, THE, NTU and URAP) that commonly accepted to evaluate the academic performance of the university, as well as with the objectively bibliometric indicators gathered from the Web of Science (WOS) InCitesTM - Thomson Reuters. The findings revealed that the WR results provide a good correlation with both ranking systems’ results and with 12 bibliometric variables namely: WOS Documents, Times Cited, Citation Impact (CI), Citation Impact: Category Normalized (CNCI), Citation Impact: Journal Normalized (JNCI), Impact Relative to World, % of Top 1% Documents, % of Top 10% Documents, Highly Cited Papers, h-index, International Collaborations, and % Industry Collaborations. The consistency between WR and the studied six rankings increases with increasing the weight percent of the research or bibliometric indicators in these six global rankings. Moreover, the consistency between WR and survey-based rankings (USNWR, THE and QS) increases with decreasing the weight of the subjective reputation survey indicators. The North American, especially USA universities are characterized by the extremely high visibility in WR as well as in the studied seven global rankings. Thus, web-based indicators ranking (WR) offers results of comparable and similar quality to those of the six major global university rankings. Accordingly, they have the capability to rank institutional academic performance. Moreover, the reliability could be enhanced if each university has only one web-domain that accurately reflects its actual performance and activity. We recommend all institutions to apply all ranking systems together since their criteria and indicators complement each other and can form a comprehensive index for covering various HEIs activities/functions worldwide.
Some institutions of higher education in Kenya have adopted e‑Learning with the aim of coping with the increased demand for university education and to widen access to university training and education. Though there are advantages that accrue from adopting e‑Learning; its implementation and provision has not been smooth sailing. It has had to contend with certain national, organisational, technical and social challenges that undermine its successful implementation. This paper therefore aims to present a literature review of the challenges faced in the implementation and provision of e‑Learning in universities in Kenya. The scoping review method was used to identify and analyze the literature of the e‑Learning challenges. Some of the challenges revealed include: lack of adequate e‑Learning policies, inadequate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, the ever evolving technologies, lack of technical and pedagogical competencies and training for e‑tutors and e‑learners, lack of an e‑Learning theory to underpin the e‑Learning practice, budgetary constraints and sustainability issues, negative perceptions towards e‑Learning, quality issues, domination of e‑Learning aims by technology and market forces and lack of collaboration among the e‑Learning participants. These challenges need to be addressed to minimise their impact on implementation and delivery of e‑Learning initiatives in institutions of higher education in Kenya. This analysis of the e‑Learning challenges forms the basis for the ongoing research that seeks to explore and establish possible strategies to address some of these challenges.
There are many challenges when attempting to understand the current open access environment, and the frameworks and best practices that are driving the movement forward. Collection development and scholarly communications have become a partnership of blurred lines, as paid subscriptions must be managed in parallel with open access content. Given the rapid pace of change, the coverage of the past 20 years of open access is the most relevant to grasp present conditions and the trajectory of the future of open access initiatives. Within that time frame, important milestones, advocacy groups, open access models, and sprouting enterprises will illustrate what is meant when open access is discussed.
Purpose - This study evaluates the correlations between the universities' type of property (public, private associative and private corporate), institutional seniority (<20, 20-45 and> 45 years), and the presence and position in national and international university rankings.
Design/methodology/approach - It considers 90 Peruvian universities certified by SUNEDU (public agency for the accreditation of universities in Peru), according to their presence in 20 university rankings (yes/no) and the position (tertiles) in two world rankings: Webometrics and SIR Iberoamericano. Four universities participated in 10 or more rankings and only 16 (18%) in 6 or more.
Findings - The private corporate universities were the least old (p <0.01). No association was found with the type of property both in the presence in rankings and in the positioning (p> 0.05), except in one where there was less participation of public institutions. Long-lived universities had higher participation and better positioning in rankings than those with less seniority (p <0.01). The presence and better positioning in university rankings depend on institutional seniority and not on the type of ownership in Peruvian licensed universities.
Originality - This research highlights the lack of equity in several international rankings for the evaluation of the quality of universities, in the respect that most of them give priority to aspects related to institutional seniority and size. At the same time, the results of younger and smaller institutions are not put into perspective.
Keywords University ranking, university quality, institutional seniority, property type, university education, higher education, THE, ARWU, Webometrics, QS.
Article classification Research Paper
This paper was designed to identify the causes of poor ranking of Nigerian higher institutions with a view to finding a lasting solution to the issue. The review method was used in this paper. Primary information was obtained from webometrics website, Nigerian Universities Commission website among other sources. The reasons for poor ranking of institutions include lack of web use policy, inadequate infrastructure, scarce use of web for publishing, teaching, research and learning activities etc. the implication of poor ranking include inability to secure more funds from stakeholders, lack of international recognition and prestige etc. the paper recommends that a each institution should put up a web policy to guide the use of the web for teaching, learning research and communication of university activities and achievements to the global community.
Tacit Knowledge (TK) is a resource that is embodied within individuals in the form of experiences, ideas, beliefs, values, and norms. The specific objectives of this study were to examine TK assets at universities in Kenya and establish how TK is managed at universities in Kenya. Qualitative research approach was adopted and multiple case studies through purposive sampling to explore how universities in Kenya are managing their TK. Data was collected through interviews from 39 key informants from the four case study sites. Data was analysed using; conversation analysis, computer assisted qualitative data analysis, and chi-square tests. This study is important because TK is quite essential for institutional functioning and progress. This study identifies human, innovation, and relational capital as assets that have helped institutions to grow in terms of work processes, decision making and creation of new products and/or services. Institutions may need to develop TK assets as tools of their core development goals. The findings of this study can influence TK management policy formulation.
University rankings have gradually become an issue for concern in the academic
community worldwide. Several mechanisms with different methodologies have been
developed to rank the universities appropriately. However, some ranking tools have
notable issues, especially with the indicators adopted. Some are based merely on research performance, whilst others have focused solely on specific fields, such as science and technology – which could have deprived those in the arts and social sciences. This paper uses a narrative review to highlight a number of inconsistencies in the methodologies applied to rank universities. Five main ranking tools commonly applied to the world's universities are reviewed, namely Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Leiden University ranking and Webometrics ranking. We found that several flaws in the rankings caused inconsistencies in university placings in different rankings. Suggestions for integrating multiple criteria and indicators for better ranking exercises are proposed.
Knowledge Sharing is a complex and key activity for State Corporations. This study argues Knowledge Sharing as a catalyst to employee’s productivity and sustainable economic growth towards a knowledge-based economy. This study accentuated the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Knowledge Sharing by assessing its influence on Knowledge Sharing in State Corporations in Kenya with reference to the Kenya National Library Service; a state corporation whose employees constitutes the target population for this study. The research used stratified random sampling to select a sample of 142 members from the population of 675 employees. Descriptive research design was used for this study. Data collected through questionnaires and interviews was inductively analyzed using SPSS (version 20). The findings were presented and descriptively discussed in line with the literature that appraised the study. The results of the study statistically significantly revealed that 65.2% of any positive change in knowledge sharing in state corporations in Kenya can be attributed to ICT. Precisely, ICT tools was found to explain 70.1% of positive variability in Knowledge sharing, ICT infrastructure 89.40%, ICT skills 87.3% while structural aspects of ICT, were found to significantly affect 97.2% of variability in Knowledge sharing. The study findings are of paramount significance in policy formulation and knowledge management in public sector. This study recommends development of an integrated ICT and Knowledge sharing policy framework and increased ICT investment to entrench Collaborative Knowledge Sharing in State Corporations in Kenya.
The study of the paper aims to describe efforts to improve the quality of an institution's University of leadership management. The method uses a quantitative approach and path analysis. The point management institution is the academic education quality and the reputation of the university's publications which is the Tridarma statute for Higher Education in teaching-learning, research approach, and community service. Scientific publications are a starting point for global involvement in Higher Education management. Higher education management shows from Webometrics as an international recognition database for university rankings. It sees on the accreditation institutions such as ISO, National Accreditation for Higher Education as a quality service assessment bodies for Higher Education, e-Journal as a scientific publication agency in the publishing management network for papers written by lecturers and research findings of universities, and International office as an institution for national and international partnerships to achieve organizational success. The paper discusses 4 official Leadership Management Programs to improve the quality of the Bengkulu State Islamic Institute (IAIN Bengkulu).
Rationale of Study – Indigenous knowledge (IK) is the traditional knowledge that is exclusive to a culture or society. In the knowledge-based economy, there is need for policy makers to innovatively use indigenous knowledge to realise their development targets. Unfortunately, IK has been abandoned, defamed and suppressed by most people due to either them being ignorant or arrogant. Thus, the role of indigenous knowledge in socioeconomic development remains unexplored. It is not strange, therefore, that the role of indigenous knowledge in the realisation of Kenya’s Vision 2030 is unclear. This study analysed the potential role that IK can play in the realisation of the social and economic pillars of Kenya’s Vision 2030.Methodology – The study was designed as exploratory research. Data was collected through content analysis of the Vision 2030 and the documents of the projects implemented under it.Findings – The findings indicate that IK has been integrated to projects in agriculture, education and tourism. However, the integration of IK in environmental conservation, health, cottage industry, reconciliation and values was inadequate. The challenges inhibiting the adequate integration of IK in these sectors included IK property rights, national policies, role of ICTs, controversial aspects of IK, and the tacit nature of IK.Implications – The government of Kenya and other stakeholders can use the findings of this study to leverage on indigenous knowledge on socio-economic development.Originality – Although this paper relies on existing literature, it nonetheless provides new perspectives to the topic. Hence it is original in terms of context, scope and application.
A common approach when setting up a website is to utilize third party Web hosting and content delivery networks. Without taking this trend into account, any measurement study inspecting the deployment and operation of websites can be heavily skewed. Unfortunately, the research community lacks generalizable tools that can be used to identify how and where a given website is hosted. Instead, a number of ad hoc techniques have emerged, e.g., using Autonomous System databases, domain prefixes for CNAME records. In this work we propose Pythia, a novel lightweight approach for identifying Web content hosted on third-party infrastructures, including both traditional Web hosts and content delivery networks. Our framework identifies the organization to which a given Web page belongs, and it detects which Web servers are self-hosted and which ones leverage third-party services to provide contents. To test our framework we run it on 40,000 URLs and evaluate its accuracy, both by comparing the results with similar services and with a manually validated groundtruth. Our tool achieves an accuracy of 90% and detects that under 11% of popular domains are self-hosted. We publicly release our tool to allow other researchers to reproduce our findings, and to apply it to their own studies.
This study aimed to analyze the websites' ranks on Iranian Medical Sciences Universities in the period of 11 September
2016 to 1March 2017. It was performed on Webometrics method which contains 41 Websites of Iranian Medical
Sciences Universities. For instance, Moz, Google, Google Scholar and so on. University of Shiraz's website topped the
table. Tehran, Shahid Beheshti and Bandar Abbas Universities' websites followed Shiraz in order. Meanwhile, Kerman
University of Medical Sciences, North Khorasan, Bushehr and Urmia experienced the highest increase on Home contents,
scientific resources, input links and rich files. First-rank universities, as well as universities with the highest growth, all
owns what a good website should have the basic contents and beyond. In one word, the results of this study showed
that except a limited number of universities possess high-quality website, others have weak effect.
Examine the relationship between webometrics ranking and the quality of education and research in academic institutions in Kenya; and suggest appropriate solutions to enhance the practice. Descriptive survey design applied quantitative and qualitative research where structured questionnaire and document reviews were used to collect data from the respondents. Webometrics ranking promotes quality of education and research in academic institutions through visibility that showcases research activities and enriches knowledge. Collaboration and partnerships was the leading strategy for high webometrics ranking practice and performance in academic institutions. Numerous strategies were recommended for maintaining and improving webometrics ranking performance including use of web champions, marketing and awareness. Practice of webometrics ranking as a basis for evaluating performance in institutions of higher learning and education is gaining momentum worldwide. Excellence performance based on webometrics matrix provides practical lessons, suggestions and local solutions for other institutions of higher learning. Webometrics ranking promotes quality research and education in institutions of higher learning; provides public information on academic standing and performance; fosters competition in academic institutions; provides evidence that stimulates the evolution of centres of excellence; and enhances additional rationale for allocation of funds. Practice supports teaching, research related activities and scholarly communications that promotes the need for development of standards and policies in higher education and learning. Fundamental in fostering competition and promoting quality education and research through enrichment of knowledge and content repositories. Strategies for sustainable webometrics ranking performance need to be stipulated in achieving excellence performance in higher education and learning.
Challenges to Assess Accessibility in Higher Education Websites: A Comparative Study of Latin America Universities
Open Access
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8388714
Abstract:
The Web has revolutionized our daily lives, becoming a prime source of information, knowledge, inquiry, and provision of services in various areas. It is possible to obtain information easily from any institution through the internet; in fact, the first impression of an organization an individual perceives is almost always based on its official website. Services related to education are increasing worldwide; therefore, it is important that users, regardless of their disabilities, be able to access these websites in an effective manner. However, the homepages of universities in Latin America still do not meet web accessibility criteria. This study describes the problems of web accessibility identified in 348 main university websites in Latin America according to their rankings on Webometrics. The results show that the universities’ websites have frequent problems related to the lack of alternative image text. It was found that the university websites included in the present study violate web accessibility requirements based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. The many problems identified concerning website accessibility indicate that it is necessary to strengthen web accessibility policies in each country and apply better directives in this area to make websites more inclusive.
Published in: IEEE Access ( Early Access )
Date of Publication: 19 June 2018
Electronic ISSN: 2169-3536
DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2848978
Publisher: IEEE
Sponsored by: IEEE
The number of webpages in the Internet has increased tremendously over the last two decades however only a part of it is indexed by various search engines. This small portion is the indexable web of the Internet and can be usually reachable from a Search Engine. Search engines play a big role in making the World Wide Web accessible to the end user, and how much of the World Wide Web is accessible on the size of the search engine’s index. Researchers have proposed several ways to estimate this size of the indexable web using search engines with and without privileged access to the search engine’s database. Our report provides a summary of methods used in the last two decades to estimate the size of the World Wide Web, as well as describe how this knowledge can be used in other aspects/tasks concerning the World Wide Web.
The use and continuous use of the website in the developed countries universities are predominant, and the developing countries universities are heightening their effort in the aspect of education technology. The reason why one university website is better than the other concerning quality and accessibility is the focus of this study and this prompt evaluation of 141 Universities in Nigeria across the Federal, State, and the Private ownership. We opted for a hybrid approach to cover the gap in the previous studies. WebQual and SITEQUAL as a framework is adopted based on the web analytical tools. The study contributes theoretically by combining two website quality theories to explain the inhibitors, improvement, quality and future updates of Nigeria Universities websites based on ease of use, processing speed, aesthetic design, interactive responsiveness, entertainment, trust and usefulness and come up with a new WebFUQII model. The contributes to methodology by using web diagnostic hybrid tools that gives more explanatory power. The study also gives managerial implications and guides future direction.
Background and Objectives: Active presence of hospitals on the Internet is becoming a hallmark of hospitals’
commitment to quality healthcare services delivery. For insightful planning towards a strong Internet-based information
delivery and communication, there is a need for continuous monitoring of hospital website’s status. Built on
this need, this paper provides, for the first time, a ranking of a large number of Iranian hospital websites based on
standard webometric methods.
Methods: The study targeted ranking of all hospitals affiliated with the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education.
Name and URLs of the hospitals were obtained from the official website of the Ministry and then updated
using web search, when needed. Hospital websites with un-standard URLs and extremely limited content were
excluded from the study, and the remaining websites were analyzed and ranked according to webomeric measures.
Findings: A ranking list of 93 hospitals was obtained. The three top-rank websites belong to the hospitals affiliated
with Tehran University of Medical Sciences followed by websites of hospitals of Beheshti and Shiraz universities of
medical sciences. The top 20 websites belong to hospitals affiliated with only seven medical universities among 17
surveyed. The size, visibility, and richness of hospital websites showed significant intercorrelations (P < 0.001). In
addition, regression analysis identified significant linear relationship between hospital websites’ visibility and size
(β = 0.6, P < 0.001). On the other extreme, websites of most hospitals affiliated with Babol, Ahwaz, and Hamedan,
and Birjand universities of medical sciences constitute the lowest 10 rank group. While these low rank hospital
websites slightly differ in size, they share an identical rank (the lowest among all) in terms of visibility and richness.
Conclusions: This obtained ranking list of the hospitals can help hospital administrators to evaluate the strength
of their on-line presence and plan to improve their status on the web. The fact that the top 20 and the lowest 10
rank hospital websites cluster into a few medical universities highlights the importance of support from holding universities
for strong presence of their affiliated hospitals on the web. In addition, identification of significant positive
relationship between size and visibility of hospital websites encourages hospital administrators to synergistically
improve their webometric rank by increasing the size of their websites.
Keywords: Webometrics, Hospital, Web, Website, Information and Communication Technology, Internet, Ranking
The purpose of this paper is to provide a reconnaissance of major academic libraries located in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and U.S.A. that have embraced Web 2.0 tools for enhancing library services. The research is based on a survey of websites of 277 university libraries. The checkpoints used for this evaluative study were given by Nguyen (2008) for evaluating various Web 2.0 tools. Additional checkpoints were arrived at after visiting and browsing the various sites. The findings of the study acknowledge the strength of Web 2.0 tools in improving library services for users. Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Instant Messaging (IM) and blogs are popular in academic libraries. The paper concludes by offering best practices for implementing Web 2.0 tools in academic libraries.
Research excellence (RE) is a relatively new concept which has been gaining traction among scholars, government agencies and funders. No universally accepted definition of RE exists. In this paper, however, it is perceived as the sustained conceptualisation, design, execution and dissemination of optimal volumes of high quality research products which contribute effectively to societal wellbeing.
This chapter analysed the extent, nature, and suitability of use of mixed methods research by postgraduate students in Kenya as well as its influence on the quality of their research output. Data anchoring the chapter was collected through qualitative content analysis of 229 theses and dissertations of library and information science postgraduate students in Kenya retrieved from the respective institutional repositories. Of these, 193 were Master's dissertations while 36 were doctoral theses. One hundred twenty-two (53.3%) of the theses and dissertations were developed using mixed methods research while 74 (32.3%) were based on qualitative studies. Most of the students collected both qualitative and quantitative data concurrently and merged the same during analysis and interpretation. It also emerged that the bulk of data collected by the students was qualitative; quantitative data was largely used to supplement or validate qualitative data. Using citations, it emerged that theses and dissertations developed through mixed methods research attracted more citations thereby indicating a superior quality.
Objective
Altmetrics are claimed to measure the scientific, societal, educational, technological and economic impacts of science. They have some of these dimensions in common with university ranking and evaluating systems. Their results are, therefore, expected to be partially convergent with the systems’. Given the importance of the scientific and non-scientific impacts of science, this study investigated the correlations of universities’ altmetrics with their total and dimensional scores in Nature Index, Leiden, Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).
Methodology
Following a correlational design, it explored an available sample of the universities commonly ranked in the systems in 2017. The data were collected from online documents using checklists and analysed by the Spearman correlation. As Altmetric Attention Score (ASS) is efficient in that it integrates several indicators into a single one, it was used as the proxy of the universities’ social performance.
Findings
The universities showed significant positive correlations between their ASSs and their performance scores on the total and dimensional levels, except for industry income in THE, with an insignificant correlation, and proportion of collaborative publication less than 100 km. in Leiden, with an inverse correlation. The correlations ranged from weak to marginally strong.
Conclusion
The positive relationships between the universities’ performance and ASSs signified that there existed some similarities in what they measured. However, they were of weak-to-marginally strong powers, implying that the metrics differed in what they measured. The findings contribute to the existing knowledge by providing some evidence of convergence between university-level altmetrics and university performances in various dimensions.
Croatian and international higher education institutions (HEIs) value university ranking lists as a method for evaluating the impact of higher education institutions. Different ranking lists utilize different calculation methods to position universities on a scale, thus giving said institutions lower or higher visibility in the academic environment. One of the criteria used to classify a particular university is the scientific output of its researchers. Data on research productivity are mainly collected from bibliographic and citation databases such as the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) and Scopus. The accuracy of collected data depends, among other things, on the institutional affiliations that the authors list in their papers. The aim of this paper is to show that the correct listing of institutional affiliations in scientific articles indexed in the WOSCC and Scopus databases affects the number of papers attributed to the institution in question.
This paper analyses the variants of institution names that are listed as affiliations of two faculties of the University of Split. The results show that, due to different name variants entered as institutional affiliations when searching for affiliations by category, a certain number of papers cannot be attributed either to the University of Split or to a particular faculty. This may have also had an impact on some faculties' positions within the University, as well as on their placement on ranking lists.
The focus is on the role of academic librarians as professionals who are familiar with the organization of scholarly databases, as well as their institutions' scholarly output. They are often able to resolve the issue of missing author affiliations and missing links between faculty and university affiliations. Furthermore, recognition of the librarians' efforts and achievements in supporting the faculties positioning within the university, and the universities positioning nationally could benefit the status and the visibility of academic librarians within their communities.
This paper aims at an important task of computing the webometrics university ranking and investigating if there exists a correlation between webometrics university ranking and the rankings provided by the world prominent university rankers such as QS world university ranking, for the time period of 2005–2016. However, the webometrics portal provides the required data for the recent years only, starting from 2012, which is insufficient for such an investigation. The rest of the required data can be obtained from the internet archive. However, the existing data extraction tools are incapable of extracting the required data from internet archive, due to unusual link structure that consists of web archive link, year, date, and target links. We developed an internet archive scrapper and extract the required data, for the time period of 2012–2016. After extracting the data, the webometrics indicators were quantified, and the universities were ranked accordingly. We used correlation coefficient to identify the relationship between webometrics university ranking computed by us and the original webometrics university ranking, using the spearman and pearson correlation measures. Our findings indicate a strong correlation between ours and the webometrics university rankings, which proves that the applied methodology can be used to compute the webometrics university ranking of those years for which the ranking is not available, i.e., from 2005 to 2011. We compute the webometrics ranking of the top 30 universities of North America, Europe and Asia for the time period of 2005–2016. Our findings indicate a positive correlation for North American and European universities, but weak correlation for Asian universities. This can be explained by the fact that Asian universities did not pay much attention to their websites as compared to the North American and European universities. The overall results reveal the fact that North American and European universities are higher in rank as compared to Asian universities. To the best of our knowledge, such an investigation has been executed for the very first time by us and no recorded work resembling this has been done before.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the most important components of today’s Internet, and is the standard naming convention between human-readable domain names and machine-routable Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of Internet resources. However, due to the vulnerability of DNS to various threats, its security and functionality have been continuously challenged over the course of time. Although, researchers have addressed various aspects of the DNS in the literature, there are still many challenges yet to be addressed. In order to comprehensively understand the root causes of the vulnerabilities of DNS, it is mandatory to review the various activities in the research community on DNS landscape. To this end, this paper surveys more than 170 peer reviewed papers, which are published in both top conferences and journals in last ten years, and summarizes vulnerabilities in DNS and corresponding countermeasures. This paper not only focuses on the DNS threat landscape and existing challenges, but also discusses the utilized data analysis methods, which are frequently used to address DNS threat vulnerabilities. Furthermore, we looked into the DNS threat landscape from the view point of the involved entities in the DNS infrastructure in an attempt to point out more vulnerable entities in the system.
Self-archiving in Institutional Repositories (IRs) is playing a central role in the success of the Open Access initiatives. Deposited documents are more visible and probably they get more downloads and citations, but making them freely available in a local repository is not enough. Social tools, both public and academic targeting, networking or silo oriented, should be taken into account for reaching larger audiences and increase not only the scholarly but also the social impact. The paper explores the presence of IRs contents in 28 social tools (Academia, Bibsonomy, CiteUlike, CrossRef, Datadryad, Facebook, Figshare, Google+, GitHub, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, RenRen, ResearchGate, Scribd, SlideShare, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, VKontakte, Weibo, Wikipedia All Languages, Wikipedia English, Wikia, Wikimedia, YouTube and Zenodo) using a webometric approach. We collected the link mentions of 2185 IRs in the cited tools during July 2017 from Google selected data centers. The results show that most of the IRs have no strong presence in the most specializes tools and even for the most popular services the figures are not high enough too. A candidate explanation for the low number of altmetric mentions is the lack of strategy in promotion of IRs contents and certain bad practices mostly regarding URL naming.
Academic institutions now operate in highly competitive environments. Consequently, myriad mechanisms for rating the services and impact of universities have emerged as a means of influencing the choice of potential students, faculty and partners. Webometrics has emerged in the recent past as one of the most popular frameworks for measuring the impact of universities. This mechanism puts great emphasis on research productivity and dissemination. Academic libraries have developed and implemented strategies to enhance their ranking. The role and levels of involvement of academic libraries in these strategies is unclear. This study analysed the role of academic libraries in enhancing Webometrics ranking of their parent institutions. It also examined the degree to which libraries are currently involved in enhancing the Webometrics ranking of their institutions as well as how they can scale up their roles. This study was designed as an exploratory survey because webometrics is a relatively new concept. Primary data was collected through key informant interviews with academic librarians. The respondents were selected through information-oriented purposive sampling. Additional data was collected through literature review. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics. The study established that academic libraries in Kenya are, to a great extent, involved in webometrics strategies through the development of the institution's repositories, generation of web content as well as publishing and providing access to updated e-resources. This involvement is effective because it facilitates enhanced scholarly communication, resolute institutional web presence, collaboration and networking among institutions, and ultimately endorsement of the institutions' webometrics ranking. The involvement can be scaled up through effective ICT policies and infrastructure, continuous training, involvement in library consortia, and high quality content development. The findings of this study may be used by academic libraries to mainstream their role in enhancing the research productivity and impact of their institutions hence facilitating a favourable ranking. Emerging Trends in Information and Knowledge Management 414 Background of the Study All over the world, libraries are dedicated to providing equitable access to information for all; be it in written, electronic or audiovisual forms (Emeka, 2014). Silvani, Sirilli and Tuzi (2010) assert that academic libraries play one of the most important roles by meeting the information needs amongst university communities through free access to information services, platforms and products. These tools build bridges between individuals locally and globally in knowledge creation and sharing. In industrialised countries, access to modern information technology is currently one of the most attractive academic library services (Dadzie, 2015). In most African countries, academic libraries share a common trait-they have established themselves as an integral part of a national education and information system (Ikechukwu, 2009). They offer access to information, are highly service-oriented, and constantly improve their services through cooperation and networking (Krolak, 2005). Academic libraries are hybrid libraries that offer traditional media, and in the recent times, have a strong focus on providing access to online information (Rabai, 2013). In Kenya, academic libraries are increasingly cooperating with other community organisations as well as engaging in diverse activities including social readings, creative writing classes, and orientation on information and communication technologies and the Internet (Odera, 2011).
The higher education institutions across the globe are steadily increasing their usage of the web platforms to disseminate information to its stakeholders. In this background, it becomes important to make these resources inclusive. An inclusive website of a higher education institution will facilitate seamless access to its resources for Persons with Disabilities (PwDs). This paper presents an accessibility analysis of 59 higher education websites of Portugal. Both Polytechnic (19) and University (40) websites were incorporated into the study.
The accessibility analysis is carried out with three major tools: AChecker, WAVE, and aXe. With respect to the AChecker tool, the average of known problems was observed almost doubled in Universities than Polytechnic Institution websites of Portugal under all levels of conformance. With respect to WAVE tool, we found that the average of alerts, structural elements, and HTML5 & ARIA in terms of web accessibility status of websites of Polytechnic Institutes are less than the Universities, but contrast errors are found with more frequency in Polytechnic Institutes than in universities, and the average of errors and features are almost the same in both of the cases.
Also, we found that the average number of violations and needs of review guidelines as per aXe tool are 50.84 and 21.47 in Polytechnic Institutes’ websites and 30.75 and 27.83 in Universities websites belonging to Portugal, respectively. Based on scores obtained by these accessibility analysis tools, the outliers of accessibility violations are calculated with respect to websites of Polytechnic Institutes and Universities of Portugal. Moreover, we also suggested and discussed the important clues to solve the accessibility violations of websites along with their issue descriptions among the selected websites in this study. Hence, this analysis report provides the feedback to website administrator and web developers to improve the accessibility evaluation status of these websites.
Studies have shown that academic website is the most important communication tool for higher education institutions as it helps them create awareness of their presence to the world. More importantly, the multi-dimensionality of higher education institution's activities, including their core academic missions (research, teaching and knowledge transfer), can be captured in their websites and Webometrics tool, used to measure the impact of these activities. This has led to the introduction of the Webometrics ranking, which is independent and has no commercial link. The review carried out in this study identified and described the relevance of Webometrics ranking to higher education institutions. It is therefore recommended that higher education institutions should try as much as possible to look into their web ranking past performances so as to be able to: 1) analyse their impact on the web; 2) understand their academic weaknesses, etc.
This study investigated the publishing patterns of information science academics in Kenya. Using a bibliometric approach, the author conducted an analysis of the quantity, quality and visibility of the publications indexed by Google Scholar. Data for the analysis was collected using Harzing's "Publish or Perish" software from Google Scholar and presented using VOSviewer software. The findings of the study revealed low quantity, quality and visibility of research publications by information science academics in Kenya. Twenty (22.4%) serving academics are yet to publish any scholarly work. Similarly, 185 (42%) of the published papers have not been cited. This low publishing performance can be attributed to lack of scholarly communication skills; inadequate research funding and facilitation; limited access to scholarly communication channels; and heavy teaching workloads, among other factors. The quantity, quality and visibility of publications by information science academics in Kenya can be enhanced by training the lecturers on scholarly communication; accrediting journals and publishers; increasing research funding; strengthening research collaboration; increasing scholarly forums and platforms; and balancing lecturers' teaching and research workloads.
The internationalization and positioning of universities offers relative comparisons, studied according to different teaching and research criteria. Among the recognized rankings are the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) or Ranking of Shanghai, QS World University Ranking, SCimago Institutions Rankings SIR and the Web Ranking of Universities-Webometrics. Comparatively, characteristics of each one are presented in terms of scope, volume of universities positioned and evaluation criteria. The indicators associated with research and institutional capacity stand out as common criteria in the revised evaluation methodologies. Regarding Latin America, Brazil leads with its presence in the four rankings. There is a greater number of Latin American universities in QS (40%) and Webometrics (31%), in the other two rankings it does not exceed 8%.
KeywordsRanking universityWebometricsQSSCimagoShanghai
Due to the processes of internationalization, competitiveness and other related elements, universities have implemented policies and management systems that allow them to monitor and measure their world ranking position of presence on the web. The purpose of this paper is to perform a conglomerate analysis of the Top100 of the Latin American universities positioned in Webometrics database in January 2017. For this reason, information on postgraduate programs and social networks included in the websites of these institutions, and on the professors and documents found in Google Scholar was obtained. The correlation between the variables is observed, and the clusters are identified. The variable with the highest correlation with the ranking is the number of postgraduate programs. Three conglomerates are formed, with 11 being the least number of postgraduate programs guaranteeing universities to be among the Top50 positions.
A library website plays an enhanced role compared to its traditional physical library while providing a wide variety of library services to its users. Evaluation of library websites is a key to realize the extent of user acceptance acceptance acceptanceacceptanceacceptance acceptance of the website and to improve the overall quality of the website. Under such backdrop, this paper provides a framework for ranking university library websites in Sri Lanka based on two standard webometric methods. The proposed framework consists of quantitative web presence measuring attributes namely; size, visibility, rich files and scholars along with simple and comprehensible mathematical calculations. The library administrators can get awareness about whether their website has effectively represented itself on the internet with better performance from the ranking results. The findings of the study will guide to the librarians to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses accordingly with the performance of their library websites. In general, the effective presence of these library websites on the internet can be passed on as the top by having proper number of site pages in the website that impact their perceivability through web search tools and accordingly the quantity of received external links. Meanwhile, libraries having low rich files can publish more rich files on the web to improve their overall rank. The research approach, criteria and their relative impact provide useful information in monitoring the effectiveness of the current websites and provide strategic suggestions to develop enhanced websites.
Nowaday, People can access information rapidly due to technology is higher than former times. Website is tool for present information of organization. The most important thing which consider is website content because of the content will explain everything which organization presented. The most of educational institution use website for presented their information to outside. However, educational institution website made people trust of them. Especially, Ranking of educational institution website will add value to the institution too. There are many ranking which ranked website of education for different purpose. Webometrics Ranking of World University is the ranking of education institution website which assessed accessibility of website content. Whereof, propose of the ranking is evaluate the accessibility of website which focus on visibility and activities. This article aims to evaluate the total number of backlinks, number of page view, duration of visit average times and bounce rate of Thailand University’s website to finding relationship between number of backlinks, page view average, visit durations times, percentage of bounce rate and impact ranking of webometrics.
It is important that university websites and services offered through their sites are used effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily by the whole target group of the university, including disabled users. However, universities in many countries are still unable to meet the criteria for web accessibility. This study aimed to test the websites of the top universities in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkey using automated assessment tools. The results showed that university websites are more popular in Turkey, and in Turkish universities developers pay more attention to the performance of websites, followed by websites of Azerbaijani, Kyrgyz and Kazakh universities. The majority of the university websites in the study did not meet the WCAG 2.0 accessibility criteria. Only two Kyrgyz and two Kazakh university websites attained conformance level A, and only three, one Kyrgyz and two Kazakh, achieved accessibility conformance level AAA. Based on the results, it was determined that universities included in the present study need to devote more effort to making their websites more accessible for their users.
The popularity of long-tail search engine optimization (SEO) brings with new security challenges: incidents of long-tail keyword poisoning to lower competition and increase revenue have been reported. The emergence of cloud web hosting services provides a new and effective platform for long-tail SEO spam attacks. There is growing evidence that large-scale long-tail SEO campaigns are being carried out on cloud hosting platforms because they offer low-cost, high-speed hosting services. In this paper, we take the first step toward understanding how long-tail SEO spam is implemented on cloud hosting platforms. After identifying 3,186 cloud directories and 318,470 doorway pages on the leading cloud platforms for long-tail SEO spam, we characterize their abusive behavior. One highlight of our findings is the effectiveness of the cloud-based long-tail SEO spam, with 6% of the doorway pages successfully appearing in the top 10 search results of the poisoned long-tail keywords.
Examples of other important discoveries include how such doorway pages monetize traffic and their ability to manage cloud platform's countermeasures. These findings bring such abuse to the spotlight and provide some insights to eliminating this practice.
With more than 294 million registered domain names as of late 2015, the domain name ecosystem has evolved to become a cornerstone for the operation of the Internet. Domain names today serve everyone, from individuals for their online presence to big brands for their business operations. Such ecosystem that facilitated legitimate business and personal uses has also fostered "creative" cases of misuse, including phishing, spam, hit and traffic stealing, online scams, among others. As a first step towards this misuse, the registration of a legitimately-looking domain is often required. For that, domain typosquatting provides a great avenue to cybercriminals to conduct their crimes. In this paper, we review the landscape of domain name typosquatting, highlighting models and advanced techniques for typosquatted domain names generation, models for their monetization, and the existing literature on countermeasures. We further highlight potential fruitful directions on technical countermeasures that are lacking in the literature.
Public universities in Kenya are, today, turning to the use of e-learning in an attempt to cope with the rapidly increasing demand for university education. This research was conducted between February 2012 and February 2014 to determine the challenges affecting the adoption of e-learning in these institutions of higher learning. Data were collected using questionnaires administered to 420 lecturers and 210 students, and analysed through the use of simple descriptive statistics. Lecturers ranked heavy workloads the most serious challenge affecting the adoption of e-learning, followed by: insufficient Internet connectivity, denial of copyrights for their developed e-learning modules, limited information and communication technology (ICT) skills, lack of incentives, shortage of computers/laptops, inadequate computer laboratories, and insufficient time for online interaction. Students, on the other hand, ranked insufficient Internet connectivity the number-one challenge, followed by: lack of computers/laptops, inadequate computer laboratories, limited ICT skills, and insufficient time for online interaction. The paper concludes that as a result of these challenges, the adoption of e-learning is slow and still at its infancy stage in public universities in Kenya. It recommends that universities should invest heavily in the improvement of e-learning infrastructure, e-learning content development, capacity building, attitude change, and enhancement of e-learning awareness.
The Green Paper Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice [BIS. 2015. Sheffield: Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/474227/BIS-15–623-fulfilling-our-potential-teaching-excellence-social-mobility-and-student-choice.pdf] suggests that the United Kingdom Higher Education (HE) landscape will be transformed, with greater emphasis on the quality of teaching and dissemination of high-quality learning and teaching (L&T) information to students. The latter is important for achieving the Government’s widening participation agenda. Previously, a survey of the websites of 38 HE institutions found that limited information was provided to prospective students on several aspects of L&T [Hosein, A., and N. Rao. 2015. An Impact Study of the Guidance Documents for Higher Education Providers Published by QAA in 2013. Gloucester: The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. http://www.qaa.ac.uk/publications/information-and-guidance/publication?PubID=3014#.VlKDp4SS1Bx]. This research study analyses interview data from quality assurance and marketing personnel in eight British universities to identify the reasons for this information gap on HE institutions websites. The findings indicate that both institutional and individual practices influence the quality of L&T website information. The recognition of these contributory factors may facilitate the provision of quality information and guidance on effective ways of addressing these.
We test the claim that African leaders favor members of their own ethnic groups by studying ethnic favoritism in the education sector in Kenya. We use data on the educational attainment of more than fifty thousand Kenyans dating back to the colonial era, as well as information about the ethnic identities of Kenyan presidents, cabinet members, and highlevel education bureaucrats since the 1960s. Consistent with previous work, we find that having a coethnic as president during one's school-age years is associated with an increase in the schooling that children acquire. In contrast to recent studies, we find that multiparty political competition has no impact on the degree of ethnic favoritism in the education sector. We also go beyond prior work in three ways. First, we show that coethnics of the minister of education also acquire more schooling than children from other ethnic groups - evidence that ministerial appointments come with real power to impact distributive politics. Second, we investigate the effects of coethnicity using different definitions of the president's ethnic community and provide evidence that the beneficiaries of ethnic favoritism can shift with the introduction of democratic electoral competition. Third, we examine several mechanisms through which having a coethnic president might matter and find much greater support for mechanisms emphasizing the supply of inputs to coethnics than those emphasizing the demand by coethnics for greater educational opportunities.
The impact and promise of new media to communication professionals is profound. The principles, theories and practice of communication are rapidly changing. With some mainstream media institutions folding shop, demassifying audiences, dwindling advertising and competition from new media, communication work can no longer be business as usual. It is easier to reach communication publics where they already "hangout" than draw them back to the mass media. The big challenge is: current crop of communication workers is schooled in the offline paradigm and lacks requisite skills to effectively engage audiences online. This book seeks to bridge this knowledge gap by discussing the fundamental concepts relating to the application of ICTs in communication from a Kenyan perspective.