The Webometrics Ranking of University Web Sites provides some interesting data. I don’t remember reading this last year, but they state on the site now: “The original aim of the Ranking was to promote Web publication, not to rank institutions. Supporting Open Access initiatives, electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material are our primary targets.” I support those goals, I am not totally convinced this is the most effective measure to do that but it provides one way of ranking web presence of universities. I am not that convinced this does a good job of ranking the web presences of universities but I think it is of some interest so I decided to post on the results.
Related: 2007 Webometrics University Ranking – Best Research University Rankings (2007) – Country H-index Rank for Science Publications – Understanding the Evolution of Human Beings by Country
| Country | % top 200 | % top 500 | % World Population | Jiao Tong top 101 |
| USA | 53 | 37.8 | 4.6 | 54 |
| Germany | 7.5 | 9.4 | 1.3 | 6 |
| United Kingdom | 5.5 | 7.2 | 0.9 | 11 |
| Canada | 8.5 | 5 | 0.5 | 4 |
| Australia | 3 | 2.8 | 0.3 | 2 |
| Italy | 0.5 | 2.8 | 0.9 | 1 |
| Japan | 1.5 | 2.4 | 2 | 6 |
| France | 0.5 | 2.4 | 0.9 | 4 |
| Netherlands | 4 | 2.2 | 0.3 | 2 |
| Sweden | 3 | 2 | 0.1 | 4 |
| Switzerland | 2 | 1.6 | 0.1 | 3 |
| Taiwan | 0.5 | 1.6 | 0.4 | 0 |
| Finland | 0.5 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 1 |
| China | 0.5 | 1.2 | 20.1 | 0 |
| Portugal | 0 | 1.2 | 0.2 | 0 |
I can’t imagine China doesn’t rank higher. There are an lot of universities in China, and a lot of them publish on the web. Could it be that the web presence measured here leans very much to inter-site relations? I mean, the number of links from Chinese to English sites will be a lot bigger than the other way around. But this doesnt mean they are less ‘present’, it’s just that they’re more accesible to a larger public.