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About Us

The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. CSIC is among the first basic research organizations in Europe. The CSIC consisted in 2006 of 126 centers and institutes distributed throughout Spain. CSIC is attached to the Ministry of Education and its main objective is to promote scientific research as to improve the progress of the scientific and technological level of the country which will contribute to increase the welfare of the citizens.

Philosophy and Justification

Webometrics only publish a unique Ranking of Universities in every edition. The combination of indicators is the result of a careful investigation and it is not open to individual choosing by users without enough knowledge or expertise in this field. Other publishers provide series of very different rankings using exactly the same data in different fashions that is completely useless and very confusing.

Webometrics is a ranking of all the universities of the world, not only a few hundred institutions from the developed world. Of course, “World-class” universities usually are not small or very specialized institutions. Webometrics is continuously researching for improving the ranking, changing or evolving the indicators and the weighting model to provide a better classification. It is a shame that a few rankings maintain stability between editions without correcting errors or tuning up indicators.

Objectives and Motivation

The original aim of the Ranking is to promote academic web presence, supporting the Open Access initiatives for increasing significantly the transfer of scientific and cultural knowledge generated by the universities to the whole Society. In order to achieve this objective, the publication of rankings is one of the most powerful and successful tools for starting and consolidating the processes of change in the academia, increasing the scholars’ commitment and setting up badly needed long term strategies.

The objective is not to evaluate websites, their design or usability or the popularity of their contents according to the number of visits or visitors. Web indicators are considered as proxies in the correct, comprehensive, deep evaluation of the university global performance, taking into account its activities and outputs and their relevance and impact.

Methodology

The Ranking Web is not a ranking of the websites of Universities, it is a Ranking of Universities. It uses both webometric (all missions) and bibliometric (research mission) indicators. The primary objective of the Ranking Web is to promote Open Access to the knowledge generated by the University. Best strategy to improve your rank is to increase quantity and quality of your web contents.

Ranking Web started in 2004 (current is the 20th year of publication) with the aim of offer full coverage of Higher Education Institutions whatever the country or discipline involve. Currently we ranked 31 000 HEIs from more than 200 countries. Editors of the Ranking Web are scientists working at one world-class public research institution with long experience in metrics-guided evaluation.

The Ranking Web or Webometrics is the largest academic ranking of Higher Education Institutions offering every six months an independent, objective, free, open scientific exercise for providing reliable, multidimensional, updated and useful information about the performance of universities from all over the world.