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A comparison of sources of links for academic Web impact factor calculations

Article Information:

Title:

A comparison of sources of links for academic Web impact factor calculations

Author(s):

Mike Thelwall

Journal:

Journal of Documentation

Year:

2002

Volume:

58

Issue:

1

Page:

66 - 78


ISSN:

0022-0418


DOI:

10.1108/00220410210425412

Publisher:

MCB UP Ltd

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Abstract:

There has been much recent interest in extracting information from collections of Web links. One tool that has been used is Ingwersen’s Web impact factor. It has been demonstrated that several versions of this metric can produce results that correlate with research ratings of British universities showing that, despite being a measure of a purely Internet phenomenon, the results are susceptible to a wider interpretation. This paper addresses the question of which is the best possible domain to count backlinks from, if research is the focus of interest. WIFs for British universities calculated from several different source domains are compared, primarily the .edu, .ac.uk and .uk domains, and the entire Web. The results show that all four areas produce WIFs that correlate strongly with research ratings, but that none produce incontestably superior figures. It was also found that the WIF was less able to differentiate in more homogeneous subsets of universities, although positive results are still possible.

Keywords:

Information retrieval, Internet


Article Type:

Research paper


Article URL:

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/00220410210425412

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