[BOAI] Ranking Web of Universities: July 2009 edition

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Isidro F. Aguillo.  --Peter Suber.]


The July edition of the Ranking Web of World Universities 
(http://www.webometrics.info) shows important news. Most of them are due to 
changes done to improve the academic impact of the open web contents and to 
reduce the geographical bias of search engines. As a result, the US 
universities still lead the Ranking (MIT with its huge Open Courseware is 
again the first, followed by Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley), but the 
digital gap with their European counterparts (Cambridge and Oxford are in 
the region's top) has been reduced. Even more important, some of the 
developing countries institutions reach high ranks, especially in Latin 
America where the University of Sao Paulo (38th) and UNAM (44th) benefits 
from the increasingly interconnected Brazilian and Mexican academic webspaces.

Several countries improves their performance including Taiwan and Saudi 
Arabia with strong web oriented strategies, Czech Republic (Charles), the 
leader for Eastern Europe, Spain (Complutense) and Portugal (Minho, Porto) 
with huge repositories and strong Open Access initiatives. Norway (NTNU, 
Oslo), Egypt could be also mentioned.

On the other side, the underrated are headed by France, with a very 
fragmented system, Korea, whose student-oriented websites are frequently 
duplicated, New Zealand, India or Argentina.

Africa is still monopolized by South African universities (Cape Town is the 
first, 405th), as well as Australian Universities are the best ranked for 
Oceania (Australian National University, 77th)

Other well performing institutions include Cornell or Caltech in the USA, 
Tokyo (24th) Toronto (28th), Hong Kong (91st), or Peking (104th). On the 
contrary, in positions below expected we find Yale, Princeton, Saint 
Petersburg, Seoul and the Indian Institutes of Science or Technology.

Check out also:

Ranking Web of Research Centers http://research.webometrics.info/
Ranking Web of Repositories http://repositories.webometrics.info/
Ranking Web of Hospitals http://hospitals.webometrics.info/
Ranking Web of Business Schools http://business-schools.webometrics.info/


-- 

*************************************
Isidro F. Aguillo, HonPhD
Cybermetrics Lab
CCHS - CSIC
Albasanz, 26-28, 3C1. 28037 Madrid. Spain

Ph. 91-602 2890. Fax: 91-602 2971

isidro.aguillo @ cchs.csic.es
www. webometrics.info
*************************************


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