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- Hyperlink Analysis -Merton & Garfield vs.
Malinowski & MacRoberts
Mike Thelwall
Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group
University of Wolverhampton, UK
AoIR, Sept. 2004
Data sources for web use Web server logs
Good source, but restricted to individual sites Hyperlinks
Secondary source of information – few users actually create hyperlinks
Commercial search engines can be used for raw data about the ‘whole’ Web
Analogies with bibliometric citation studies Hyperlink studies will be discussed in this talk
What use is hyperlink data to qualitative researchers?
Part of a mixed methodology Numbers to back up theories To obtain samples of types of Web pages for
qualitative analyses Background information on how the Web
is used
Data collection Web crawler AltaVista advanced queries
linkdomain:aoir.org NOT domain:aoir.org
Note: Google does not allow this kind of Boolean query
Example Link Research Topic: University Web Site Interlinking
A brief summary of recent research – over 50 papers published on this topic
Note that this is a quantitative-driven research topic (loads of stats)
What do links signify? (Garfield-Merton vs. MacRoberts-Malinowski ) Counts of links to universities within a country
can correlate significantly with measures of research productivity
The significance of this result is in giving ‘permission’ to investigate the use of inter-university links for researching scholarly communication
>> Links Associate with Research
Links to UK universities against their research productivity
The reason for the strong correlation is the quantity of Web publication, not its quality
This is different to citation analysis
Most links are only loosely related to research A random sample of links between UK university sites
revealed over 90% had some connection with scholarly activity, including teaching and research
Less than 1% were equivalent to citations
A big difference to the similar field of citation analysis 50% Garfield-Merton and 50% MacRoberts-
Malinowski?
Geographic clustering on the web
This is clearest for Scottish universities but also for other groupings, including Manchester-based universities
Coherent clusters are difficult to extract because of overlapping research and geographic trends
Language on the web English the dominant language for Web sites in
the Western EU In a typical country, 50% of pages are in the
national language(s) and 50% in English Non-English speaking extensively interlink in
English{Research with Rong Tang}
Mapping patterns of international communicationCounts of links between Asia-Pacific universities are represented by arrow thickness.
{Research with Alastair Smith, VUW, NZ}
Uses of hyperlink data for qualitative researchers
Part of a mixed methodology Numbers to back up theories To obtain samples of types of Web pages for
qualitative analyses Use in conjunction with content analysis
Background information on how the Web is used
Free info and software! http://linkanalysis.wlv.ac.uk