The calculation of web impact factors

doi:10.1108/EUM0000000007167

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Journal of Documentation

ISSN: 0022-0418

Online from: 1945

Subject Area: Library and Information Studies

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The calculation of web impact factors

Document Information:
Title:	The calculation of web impact factors
Author(s):	Peter Ingwersen, (Centre for Informetric Studies, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Birketinget 6, DK 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark)
Citation:	Peter Ingwersen, (1998) "The calculation of web impact factors", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 54 Iss: 2, pp.236 - 243
Keywords:	Boolean logic, Information systems, World Wide Web
Article type:	Case study
DOI:	10.1108/EUM0000000007167 (Permanent URL)
Publisher:	MCB UP Ltd
Abstract:	This case study reports the investigations into the feasibility and reliability of calculating impact factors for web sites, called Web Impact Factors (Web-IF). The study analyses a selection of seven small and medium scale national and four large web domains as well as six institutional web sites over a series of snapshots taken of the web during a month. The data isolation and calculation methods are described and the tests discussed. The results thus far demonstrate that Web-IFs are calculable with high confidence for national and sector domains whilst institutional Web-IFs should be approached with caution. The data isolation method makes use of sets of inverted but logically identical Boolean set operations and their mean values in order to generate the impact factors associated with internal- (self-) link web pages and external-link web pages. Their logical sum is assumed to constitute the workable frequency of web pages linking up to the web location in question. The logical operations are necessary to overcome the variations in retrieval outcome produced by the AltaVista search engine.