- Hyperlink Analysis Merton & Garfield vs. Malinowski

- 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 Hyperlinks

Good source, but restricted to individual sites 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 http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/09/18.html Lilia Efimova http://www.aoir.org/2004/ 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? (GarfieldMerton vs. MacRobertsMalinowski )

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 interuniversity 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% MacRobertsMalinowski? Geographic Patterns Patterns in counts of links between university Web sites Geography is important on the web 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

A pathfinder network of UK university interlinking with geographic clusters indicated You are here International Issues

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

communication Counts of links between AsiaPacific 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