Abstract
The web site is an important communication medium for universities in many countries. There are numerous reasons to expect that their characteristics will vary along national lines, the most immediate being differences in technological level and the organisation of higher education. In a world where the web is seen in many places as an important source of information it has the potential to overcome national boundaries, but are there still technological barriers? This paper reports on the results of a survey of the sizes of 670 web sites of higher education institutions in countries associated with the European Union, as estimated by AltaVista. It finds that there are still enormous national differences of up to three orders of magnitude. A related issue addressed is the extent to which AltaVista"s coverage of university web sites is reliable and consistent across Europe. Large but uneven differences were identified between the main engine and national variations. Despite such methodological problems and cultural reasons for national variations in web site development, a clear pattern emerges, with the richer countries in Europe having much larger web sites. This is a problem for those wishing to use the Internet to increase international collaboration.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bar-Ilan, J. (1999). Search engine results over time-A case study on search engine stability. Cybermetrics, 2/3. [online]. Available: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v2i1p1.html
Bar-Ilan, J. (2001). Data collection methods on the Web for informetric purposes-A review and analysis. Scientometrics, 50(1): 7-32.
Boezerooy, P., Vossensteyn, H. (1999). How to get in?-a comparative overview of access to higher education. Higher Education in Europe, 24(3): 349-358.
Bologna Declaration (1999). Joint declaration of the European Ministers of Education Convened in Bologna on the 19th of June 1999. [online]. Available: http://www.unige.ch/cre/activities/Bologna%20Forum/Bologne1999/bologna%20declaration.htm (March 2001)
Cambridge University (2001). General Guidelines for consideration of proposals for collaboration with other universities in the provision of courses and examinations. [online]. Available: http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/education/collab.html (February 2001)
Chon, K. (2001). The future of the Internet digital divide, Communications of the ACM, 44(3): 116-117.
Cia (2000). World Factbook 2000. [online]. Available: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html (May 2001)
Darmoni, S. J., Thirion, B., Douyere, M., Challoub, C., Leroy, J. P. (2000). Measurment of the Web site impact: the Web Impact Factor. The example of the French University Hospitals. Revue du Praticien-Médecine Générale, 14 (516): 2079-2080.
Euroeducation Net (2001). [online]. Available http://www.euroeducation.net/ (March 2001)
Europa (2001). Fifth framework programme. [online]. Available: http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/fp5.html (February 2001)
European Union (1998). A guide to higher education systems and qualifications in the EU and EEA countries. [online]. Available: http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/socrates/erasmus/guide/default.html (March 2001)
Gruntorad, J. (1992). Research and academic networking in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 25(4–5): 438-443.
Hefce, (2001). Institutions funded by the Council. [online]. Available: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/UniColl/default.htm (March 2001)
House OF Commons (2000). Commons Committee stage of the Learning and Skills Bill debate. [online]. Available: http://www.brad.ac.uk/admin/conted/action/News%20and%20Events/learningbill.htm
Ingwersen, P. (1998). The calculation of Web Impact Factors. Journal of Documentation, 54(2): 236-243.
Knudsen, I., Haug, G., Kirstein, J. (1999). Trends in learning structures in higher education. [online]. Available: http://www.rks.dk/trends1.htm (March 2001)
Leydesdorff, L., Curran, M. (2000). Mapping university-industry-government relations on the Internet: the construction of indicators for a knowledge-based economy. Cybermetrics, 4. [online]. Available: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v4i1p2.html
Middleton, I., Mcconnell, M., Davidson, G. (1999). Presenting a model for the structure and content of a university World Wide Web site. Journal of Information Science, 25(3): 219-227.
Rousseau, R. (1999). Daily time series of common single word searches in AltaVista and NorthernLight. Cybermetrics, 2/3. [online]. Available: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v2i1p2.html
Snyder, H., Rosenbaum, H. (1998). How public is the Web?: Robots, Access and Scholarly Communication. Proceedings of the ASIS 98 Annual Meeting, 453-462.
Snyder, H., Rosenbaum, H. (1999). Can search engines be used for web-link analysis? A critical review. Journal of Documentation, 55(4), 375-384.
Sporn, B. (1999). Towards more adaptive universities: trends of institutional reform in Europe. Higher Education in Europe, 24(1): 23-33.
Sroka, M. (1998). Commercial development of the Internet and WWW in Eastern Europe. Online & CD-ROM Review, 22(6): 367-376.
Stannet (2001), Les serveurs W3 sur StanNet. [online]. http://www.u-nancy.fr/ (April 2001)
Thelwall, M. (2001a). Results from a Web Impact Factor crawler. Journal of Documentation, 57(2): 177-191.
Thelwall, M. (2001b). Extracting macroscopic information from web links. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52 (13) 1157-1168.
Thelwall, M. (2001c). The responsiveness of search engine indexes. Cybermetrics, 5(1). [online]. Available: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v5i1p1.html
UK Research Office (2001). [online]. Available: http://www.ukro.ac.uk/
Wright, P., Campbell C., Garrett, R. (1997a). Setting the context of higher education in Europe (The national committee of enquiry into Higher Education). [online]. Available: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/r11_065.htm (March 2001)
Wright, P., Campbell C., Garrett, R. (1997b). The relationship of UK degrees to those elsewhere in Europe (The national committee of enquiry into Higher Education). [online]. Available: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/r11_069.htm (March 2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thelwall, M., Binns, R., Harries, G. et al. European Union associated university websites. Scientometrics 53, 95–111 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014836021080
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014836021080