|
Maps
of the academic web in the European Higher Education Area: an exploration
of visual web indicators
Jose
Luis Ortega*, Isidro Aguillo*,
Viv Cothey**, Andrea
Scharnhorst***
*Internet
Lab, CINDOC-CSIC, Joaquín Costa, 22. 28002 Madrid. Spain
{jortega; isidro}@cindoc.csic.es
** School
of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wolverhampton,
Lichfield Street, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, WV1 1SB viv.cothey@wlv.ac.uk
*** Virtual
Knowledge Studio, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cruquiusweg
31, 1019 AT Amsterdam, The Netherlands, andrea.scharnhorst@vks.knaw.nl
aaaaaAbstract
aaaaaThis
paper shows maps of the web presence of the European Higher Education
Area (EHEA) on the level of universities using hyperlinks and analyses
the topology of the European academic network. Its purpose is to combine
methods from Social Network Analysis (SNA) and cybermetric techniques
in order to ask for tendencies of integration of the European universities
visible in their web presence and the role of different universities
in the process of the emergence of an European Research Area. We find
as a main result that the European network is set up by the aggregation
of well-defined national networks, whereby the German and British networks
are dominant. The national networks are connected to each other through
outstanding national universities in each country.
aaaaaIntroduction
aaaaaVisualization
of Information (VI) (TUFTE, 1997; CHEN, 2003) is a technique that it
aims to show conceptual entities and their relationships through visual
metaphors that allows us to interpret and extract conclusions about
a certain complex phenomena. Inside of VI, Maps of Science (SMALL, 2003;
SMALL & GRIFFITH, 1974; WHITE & GRIFFITH, 1981; McCAIN, 1990)
are a model of the utility that show(s) the scientific relationships
among authors or academic institutions through the citations, co-authorship,
or co-word analysis. Although NOYONS (1999) defines Maps of Science
as "landscapes of scientific research fields created by quantitative
analysis of bibliographic data", recently web data have been used
as additional source of information on scientific networks. LARSON (1996)
was the first to map the out- and in-link relationships of several Earth
Science web pages using co-link analysis and displaying in a Multidimensional
Scaling (MDS) graph. POLANCO et al. (2001) also mapped and clustered
791 European universities web sites using co-link analysis. HEIMERIKS,
HORLESBERGER, and VAN DEN BESSELAAR (2003) and HEIMERIKS (2005) more
recently mapped 220 EU universities at the level of departments, universities
and countries find cultural and linguistic pattern in their relationships.
VAUGHAN and YOU (2005) and VAUGHAN (2006) introduced co-link maps as
a technique to study the business relationship between companies and
to know the presence of companies in concrete markets.
aaaaaThe
World Wide Web is a complex network that connects web pages and sites
through hypertextual links creating a large and dense network of nodes
(SCHARNHORST, 2003). Network Analysis is both a suitable way to present
graphically the link relationship in the web and a technique to analyze
and understand the web structure and topology. Recently, the web has
been analyzed as a complex network from point of view of statistical
physics (BARABASI, ALBERT & JEONG, 2000; ALBERT JEONG, & BARABASI,
1999; BRODER et al., 2000). ALBERT, JEONG and BARABASI (1999) estimated
the diameter of the Web, i.e. number of links to cover whole web, to
be 19 nodes. These same authors (BARABASI et al., 2000) discovered that
the Web showed scale-free networks properties because just a few nodes
attract a huge amount of links and the remaining majority only attracts
a few of them. Meanwhile, the analysis of web graphs in terms of scale-free
or small world networks has been incorporated into information science
(BJÖRNEBORN, 2001, 2003; KATZ & COTHEY, 2006; THELWALL &
WILKINSON, 2003). Web graphs based on hyperlinks are only one example
of such studies. Different authors have developed thematic maps about
several web objects (DODGE, 2004) with the intention of making the distribution
of users, flow, servers, etc., along the world or in a certain visible
region. In 1992 PATERSON and COX (1992) mapped the exponential growing
of the internet traffic in the US detecting the main edges of information
activity. In 1993 Brian Reid (DODGE & KITCHIN, 2001) mapped the
flow of USENET network, and YOOK, JEONG and BARABASI (2001) made a map
about the distribution of population against the number of routers connected
to Internet
aaaaaObjectives
aaaaaIn
this paper we present first attempts to map the web presence of the
European Higher Education Area (EHEA) on the level of countries and
universities. The aim is to get insights how structured the European
academic space in the web is. In particular, we ask which agglomerative
aggregation of universities across European countries can be seen on
the web. Do we get a random network? Which role plays geographic neighborhood?
Or will we observe a superposition of national networks? We want to
see the relationships among the universities in and between European
countries in term of their hyperlink structures (including link as well
as co-link structures). Through applying tools from Network Analysis
to cybermetric data we intent to identify the main agents (universities
or countries) and their role inside of the European academic web environment.
aaaaaMethods
aaaaa535
universities of the 14 European countries (EU except Luxembourg) in
2004 were selected from Webometrics Ranking of World Universities (www.webometrics.org).
This site ranks 3,000 universities according two main criteria: size
(number of pages and rich files) and visibility (number of incoming
links). This set of European universities were mapped according to the
link relationships among them. Two different set of web data were used:
search engine data and crawler data. The search engine was used to retrieve
the link relationships between web sites and the crawler was used to
extract the pages hosted in each web site. The combination of these
different tools allows us to obtain suitable data in a fast and exhaustively
way. For instance, the link extraction is a complex task to done with
a crawler, whereas a search engine provide this information more easily.
In any case, we think that in macro level studies a possible heterogeneity
of the data might become less important, because fluctuations in the
data (due to temporarily instability) and errors in the measurement
will be leveled out on a high level of aggregation and are less important
if the size of the system under study increases. The search engine data
were obtained from Yahoo! Search with the query:
+site:{university domainA} +linkdomain:{university domainB}
aaaaaOn
the other hand, the crawler data were extracted with the software Blinker
(COTHEY, 2004; COTHEY, 2005) to find the number of pages and domains
of the 535 universities. Both set of data were obtained in August of
2005. These data were analyzed with the software Ucinet 6.109 and the
application NetDraw 2.28 was used to built the network graphs.
aaaaaThe
resulting graphs were processed in two different ways. A graph was built
through the link matrix retrieved from the search engine to illustrate
the topology of the network and its connectivity degree. This graph
was laid out with the Spring embedding algorithm through NetDraw (KAMADA
& KAWAI, 1989). This layout shows the nodes and the arcs minimizing
the cross points and the overlap of nodes to obtain an excellent network
visualization and thus to detect the main characteristics of the network.
Nevertheless, it is more appropriate to small and medium size networks
because it is quite slow when it comes to configure the network (NOOY,
MRVAR & BATAGELJ, 2005). Finally, multiple arcs with fewer than
50 links were removed to reveal a clearer graph of a network of 527
nodes.
On the other hand, a co-link map (LEYDESDORFF & VAUGHAN, 2006) was
constructed to detect the link pattern among the universities web sites
and how these are grouped according to the co-link degree. The co-link
degree between two web sites is the frequency which two web sites are
linked by a third web site. It is a measure which points to a possible
substantial relationship between the two co-linked websites. A asymmetrical
matrix of links between university websites was built with the search
engine data. Then it was converted to a symmetrical matrix applying
the Salton's cosine measure (SALTON, WONG & YANG, 1975; SALTON,
1971). Next, distance coordinates were calculated from this symmetrical
matrix through applying Multidimensional Scaling techniques (MDS) to
locate the university web sites with regard of their co-link degree
on a two-dimensional plane. Finally, the coordinates of universities
according to the MDS of their co-link structure were plotted together
with the network graph.
Several social network measures were used to analyze the resulting graphs.
Since the web is a graph of links that connect several web sites, the
SNA techniques allow us to analyzed the structural and topological features
of the European academic web network. Along this study we will explain
the utility and the calculation of the indexes used.
aaaaaResults

Figure 1. European Universities Network of links (504
nodes; 8028 ties)
aaaaaFigure
1 shows the network graph of the 527 EU universities with an average
distance among each other reachable of 1.52 nodes and a diameter of
3, hence this web graph is a dense and compact network. In Figure 1
the different countries are presented by different colors (or grey scale).
Because of the density of the network we would like to point the reader
additionally to the colored version of the graph on the web. As can
be seen from the legend, in the different countries the university websites
have been also classified into five categories according to their content.
These five categories were created ad hoc to express the main academic
subject area. Thus, Technology includes all technological schools and
universities (fachhochschulen, universities of applied sciences, etc.),
the Social Sciences group includes mainly Business Schools, Biomedicine
set up the veterinarian and medical universities and the Humanities
contains arts schools, human sciences universities and library schools.
The rest of universities without a specific oriented activity were grouped
under the General set. We will discuss the influence of the content
of the website to its classification scheme at a later point in the
paper. From a topological point of view, the graph shows the properties
of a scale-free network (ALBERT et al., 1999), which means a few nodes
attract a huge amount of links and the rest of nodes attract only a
few of them.
| University |
Domain |
nInDegree |
| University
of Leeds |
leeds.ac.uk |
0.839 |
| University
of Cambridge |
cam.ac.uk |
0.808 |
| University
of Oxford |
ox.ac.uk |
0.628 |
| Free
University of Berlin |
fu-berlin.de |
0.575 |
| University
of Helsinki |
helsinki.fi |
0.495 |
| University
of Edinburgh |
ed.ac.uk |
0.479 |
| University
of Regensburg |
uni-regensburg.de |
0.471 |
| University
of Karlsruhe |
uni-karlsruhe.de |
0.466 |
| University
of Southampton |
soton.ac.uk |
0.441 |
| University
College London |
ucl.ac.uk |
0.416 |
Table
1. Ten universities with highest nInDegree
aaaaaTable
1 shows that universities with a high nInDegree. This index measures
the normalized degree of in-coming links. Thus nInDegree is the percentage
of in-coming links to a node compared with all in-coming links over
the whole nodes in the network. This indicator allows to detect the
universities that attract a great proportion of links. The most outstanding
universities are the University of Leeds (0.839), the University of
Cambridge (0.808) and the University of Oxford (0.628), where the first
three are British universities and between the first ten there are six
ones. This allows us to state that the British network receive more
links than other countries, perhaps, due to linguistic reasons (THELWALL,
TANG & PRICE, 2003). Another possible explanation is the relative
large size of the British network which therefore offers a large number
of target pages for link (KATZ & COTHEY, 2006).
| University |
Domain |
nOutDegree |
| Humboldt
University of Berlin |
hu-berlin.de |
0.895 |
| University
of Helsinki |
helsinki.fi |
0.638 |
| University
of Edinburgh |
ed.ac.uk |
0.560 |
| Linköping
University |
liu.se |
0.538 |
| Technical
University of Berlin |
tu-berlin.de |
0.533 |
| Rhine-Westphalia
Technical University of Aachen |
rwth-aachen.de |
0.502 |
| Free
University of Berlin |
fu-berlin.de |
0.457 |
| Jussieu
Campus |
jussieu.fr |
0.452 |
| University
of Alicante |
ua.es |
0.450 |
| Royal
Institute of Technology |
kth.se |
0.440 |
Table
2. Ten Universities with highest nOutDegree
aaaaaTable
2 shows the universities with a high nOutDegree. Like the index before,
this one measures the normalized degree of out-coming links. The nOutDegree
is the percentage of out-coming links from a node over compared with
all out-links over the whole network. The most highlighted universities
are the Humboldt University of Berlin (0.895), the University of Helsinki
(0.638) and the University of Edinburgh (0.56). In this table the presence
of German universities is higher than other countries, being four in
the first ten ranks. Thus the German network is characterized by high
proportion of out-going links, although many of these go to other German
university web sites.
aaaaaOne
can also see that the universities are grouped by country. In particular,
we can distinguish the German sub-network in red, the British in blue
and the French in yellow. Surprisingly, France shows a barely connected
network and with low volume of published pages. This might be caused
by the existence of a lot of small size academic institutions (écoles)
which it have not much presence in the web. Additionally, it is visible
that there are small countries which universities do not form an homogeneous
sub-network but are spread out over other large sub-networks such as
in the case of Austria where Austrian universities are connected with
universities in Germany or in the case of Ireland where Irish universities
connect to British universities. It important to note that the Scandinavian
countries constitute a compact and close sub-network. This Scandinavian
network has also been detected in scientometric environments (BONITZ
& SCHARNHORST, 2000; GLÄNZEL, 2001; WAGNER & LEYDESDORFF,
2005b).
| Cluster
|
Nodes |
InnerLinks |
OuterLinks |
p_in |
p_out |
| Portugal |
11 |
37 |
57 |
0.672727 |
0.010200 |
| Germany,
Austria |
117 |
1704 |
812 |
0.251105 |
0.017264 |
| UK, Ireland,
Netherlands, Belgium |
136 |
1001 |
1071 |
0.109041 |
0.020561 |
| Greece |
11 |
29 |
31 |
0.527273 |
0.005548 |
| Italy |
47 |
240 |
201 |
0.222017 |
0.009061 |
| Spain |
51 |
432 |
166 |
0.338824 |
0.006955 |
| Sweden,
Denmark, Finland |
63 |
381 |
493 |
0.195084 |
0.017161 |
| France |
81 |
265 |
274 |
0.081790 |
0.007723 |
Table
3. p-cliques of the EU Universities network
aaaaaTable
3 shows the p-cliques found in the European network of Universities
web sites. A p-clique is a sub-graph with a high connectivity which
the nodes have whole the possible links among them. This technique allows
us to cluster nodes according to the connectivity degree. One can see
the Scandinavian cluster set up by Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The
largest cluster is shaped by UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Belgium. A
possible explanation might be the use of English as dominant language
(THELWALL, TANG & PRICE, 2003) but also collaboration structures
(WAGNER & LEYDESDORFF, 2005a) and similar disciplinary profiles
might be a possible explanation (BONITZ et al, 1993). Similar is the
case of Germany and Austria due to in this case the use of the German
language. This analysis confirms the visual appreciation which the EU
academic network is made up of the aggregation of several regional and
national networks.
aaaaaHowever,
if the EU university network comprises national networks what is the
main core of the network, the base on which the network rests? Through
using the concept of the k-cores (SEIDMAN, 1983) we want to answer this
question. A k-core is a maximal subnetwork in which each vertex has
at least degree k within subnetwork (NOOY, MRVAR & BATAGELJ, 2005).
The highest core found in our data is a 38-core which is composed by
solely 50 German universities and one Austrian, so we can conclude that
the vertex of the EU university network is rested on the German network.
aaaaaOn
the other hand, Figure 1 shows that the sites with a great number of
pages are located in the center. Further, Figure 1 is based on the Kamada-Kawai
algorithm which locates in the center of the map the nodes which are
highest linked. The nodes of big size are also the nodes with highest
centrality degree. In other words, the nodes centrally located attract
more links than the rest ones. It has been shown earlier that a correlation
exist between the number of pages on a web site and the in-links it
attracts from other web sites (ADAMIC, 2002; THELWALL, 2004; KATZ &
COTHEY, 2006). Thus, the size of a web site is key factor to achieve
a high centrality degree in the web network.
Because the EU university network is made up of the combination of national
sub-networks, which we have identified by the p-cliques analysis, it
is of interest to discover which university web sites act as hub or
gatekeeper between the national networks and the European one. The Betweenness
index measures the intermediation degree of a node to keep the network
connected, that is to say, the capacity of one node to connect only
those nodes that are not directly connected to each other. Thus, the
Betweenness will allows to show the main hubs or gates that connect
one network with other. The normalized Betweenness is the betweenness
value of a node averaged over the whole nodes in the network.
| Country |
University |
Domain |
Betweenness |
nBetweenness |
| UK |
University
of Edinburgh |
ed.ac.uk |
1,645,818 |
0.594 |
| FI |
University
of Helsinki |
helsinki.fi |
1,313,489 |
0.474 |
| AT |
University
of Vienna |
univie.ac.at |
1,295,428 |
0.467 |
| NL |
University
of Amsterdam |
uva.nl |
1,231,140 |
0.444 |
| SE |
Linköping
University |
liu.se |
1,126,263 |
0.406 |
| BE |
Catholic
University of Leuven |
kuleuven.ac.be |
1,124,354 |
0.406 |
| DE |
Free
University of Berlin |
fu-berlin.de |
1,093,416 |
0.394 |
| IT |
University
of Bologna |
unibo.it |
962,142 |
0.347 |
| ES |
University
of Barcelona |
ub.es |
739,074 |
0.267 |
| GR |
Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki |
auth.gr |
644,534 |
0.233 |
| IE |
University
of Dublin, Trinity College |
tcd.ie |
627,630 |
0.226 |
| FR |
Jussieu
Campus |
jussieu.fr |
602,567 |
0.217 |
| DK |
University
of Copenhagen |
ku.dk |
591,611 |
0.213 |
| PT |
University
of Coimbra |
uc.pt |
540,819 |
0.195 |
Table
4. Betweenness scores of the main universities of each country
aaaaaTable
4 shows the highest Betweenness scores of only the top universities
and normalized Betweenness scores of the main universities for each
country, although there are countries with have two or three high scoring
universities in Betweenness. For instance, in the UK the University
of Edinburgh is followed by the University of Cambridge (0.554) and
University of Oxford (0.536). Almost all the universities in Table 4
are know as outstanding academic institutions in its countries and as
we see now they also act as key nodes for the academic web of its countries.
An exception is the Linköping University in Sweden which has a
better web presence in its country than prestigious universities such
as University of Uppsala (0.278) or University of Stockholm (0.224).
The low position of the Jussieu Campus on the ranking list in Table
4 is related to the relative extent of disconnection of the French network
with the rest of the European networks (AGUILLO, ORTEGA & GRANADINO,
2006). The low link degree observed in the French network affect its
international visibility, causing a low betweenness degree of the French
universities.

Figure 2. European Universities Co-link map (f = 0,086)
aaaaaFigure
2 show the map of the EU universities according to the co-linkage degree
among its web sites. The obtained stress in the MDS (f = 0,086) is quite
low therefore the resulting model is acceptable for the analysis. Just
like the Figure 1 the map shows defined and compact national clusters
such as Germany in red, UK in blue and Spain in orange. One also can
see how the small countries are connected with large countries such
as Netherlands and Ireland with respect to the UK. However, one can
see particular characteristics. Spain is located far away from the rest
of the national clusters due to a low co-link degree of the Spanish
universities with regard to the other country's universities and a high
co-link degree between themselves. This is similar to Austria but to
a lesser extent. On the contrary, the French network has less density
because its universities have low a co-link degree. In general, the
low link degree and the small size of the academic institutions in France
causes a weakly connected network among the French institutions which
is spread out widely in the whole network of European universities.
aaaaaMost
universities are multidisciplinary therefore the thematic relationships
according to the university's subject matter are not distinctive. However
it is noticed that the technological universities tend to be related
at the national level such as within Spain and Finland whereas less
technological and more social science based universities such as the
business schools tend to have more international connections.
|
National
Visibility
|
| Country |
University |
Domain |
Inlinks |
Outlinks |
| DE |
Free
University of Berlin |
fu-berlin.de |
27,249 |
19,743 |
| FR |
University
of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV |
paris4.sorbonne.fr
|
25,300 |
24,413 |
| UK |
University
of Cambridge |
cam.ac.uk |
23,391 |
16,823 |
| SE |
Royal
Institute of Technology |
kth.se |
15,999 |
17,923 |
| FI |
University
of Helsinki |
helsinki.fi |
14,798 |
17,443 |
| AT |
Innsbruck
Medical University |
uibk.ac.at |
11,372 |
2,161 |
| ES |
Complutense
University of Madrid |
ucm.es |
9,781 |
9,061 |
| NL |
Free
University of Amsterdam |
vu.nl |
9,482 |
9,805 |
| IT |
University
of Bologna |
unibo.it |
8,532 |
5,792 |
| DK |
Royal
School of Library and Information Science |
db.dk |
7,058 |
7,168 |
| GR |
University
of Macedonia |
uom.gr |
6,970 |
5,819 |
| BE |
University
of Liège |
ulg.ac.be |
4,616 |
1,927 |
| PT |
Technical
University of Lisboa |
utl.pt |
3,352 |
2,655 |
| IE |
Dublin
City University |
dcu.ie |
2,252 |
1,900 |
Table
5. National visibility of the main universities by country (total number
of national in- and out-links).
|
International
Visibility
|
| Country |
University |
Domain |
Inlinks |
Outlinks |
| UK |
University
of Leeds |
leeds.ac.uk |
30,512 |
3,515 |
| AT |
University
of Vienna |
univie.ac.at |
14,015 |
14,060 |
| NL |
Utrecht
University |
uu.nl |
11,688 |
15,007 |
| DK |
Technical
University of Denmark |
dtu.dk |
11,172 |
4,700 |
| FI |
University
of Helsinki |
helsinki.fi |
10,847 |
15,513 |
| DE |
University
of Cologne |
uni-koeln.de |
9,426 |
5,312 |
| SE |
Uppsala
University |
uu.se |
8,452 |
11,443 |
| BE |
Catholic
University of Leuven |
kuleuven.ac.be |
8,339 |
10,876 |
| IT |
University
of Bologna |
unibo.it |
8,339 |
9,358 |
| GR |
National
Technical University of Athens |
ntua.gr |
6,240 |
3,594 |
| FR |
Jussieu
Campus |
jussieu.fr |
5,759 |
6,341 |
| IE |
University
of Dublin, Trinity College |
tcd.ie |
5,410 |
4,477 |
| ES |
Polytechnic
University of Madrid |
upm.es |
4,076 |
5,807 |
| PT |
University
of Coimbra |
uc.pt |
3,315 |
4,105 |
Table
6. International visibility of the main universities by country (total
number of international in- and out-links).
aaaaaTables
5 and 6 show the visibility of each university according to the out-
and in-links from or to the national universities or international ones.
The tables show differences between the national and the international
visibility. For instance the British university with the highest number
of links inside UK is the University of Cambridge. But, the university
with the highest number of links from abroad is the University of Leeds.
However there are universities that have great visibility both inside
and outside their country such as the University of Helsinki in Finland
or the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. It is significant to
notice the national and international visibility differ between the
countries. The German, French and Spanish universities have high national
visibility even though their international visibility is quite low.
aaaaaDiscussion
and Conclusions
aaaaaThe
general picture of the European academic network sector allows us to
see that it is built up of multiple national networks. That is, there
is not a single unique network but a network of national networks that
are aggregated one with another. In this aggregation process the first
component is the German network, followed by the addition of other national
networks to build the complete EU network. But one has to have in mind
that the web graph is a directed network. So the base position of Germany
is not because it is a very linked country but because it is the country
with most outlinks abroad. Thus, Germany, which universities have the
highest outdegree, builds the EU network by means of outlinks that connect
other European universities and then other national networks. At the
same time British universities are the most linked. They also build
the EU network by means of attracting links from other countries due
to the amount of contents published in English. This can probably be
explained due to amount of contents publish in English language. THELWALL,
TANG & PRICE (2003) already showed the importance of the linguistic
pattern to achieve links from outer countries in the European university
web space. This dual role of UK and Germany explains the high cohesion
that results from the small network diameter and distance between nodes.
This allows us to argue that the EHEA is quite united in the web space,
although these results need to be compared with other regions and the
relationship of these regions with the European countries such as Spain
with South America or UK with the Commonwealth countries.
One can also conclude that the EU university network is made up by the
aggregation of national networks. Thus a university is first linked
to others within its country and then this national network is connected
to other national networks. However, there are "pan-European"
universities, detected through the Betweenness index, that link and
are linked mainly to universities abroad. These universities are the
hubs or gateways that connect a national network to the whole European
network.
aaaaaThe
SNA techniques and measures make it possible to show the characteristics
of the web presence of the EU academic network. The centrality degree
measures have indicated those universities are more outstanding regarding
to the links that they attract and make; we used k-cores to detect where
the set of most interconnected web sites is and finally applied p-cliques
and discovered that the EU university network is made up of national
networks. In particular the betweeness index has been used to detected
the intermediate universities between the national networks and the
EU network. So one can to conclude that SNA techniques are a suitable
tools to analyse the topology of the web and its relationships.
aaaaaThe
co-link map showed a different kind of relationship: the co-occurrence
of incoming links. This allows to show the particular relationship between
countries and universities. This shows that although the European academic
network is highly connected there is particular countries with an open
networks connected with other networks such as Netherlands, Belgium
and the Scandinavian countries, and other countries such as Spain or
Austria that are few co-linked internationally or France which network
is barely united. Nevertheless, we have been not able to detect subject
relationship because almost all the universities are multidisciplinary
although some technical and social sciences universities have showed
certain subject co-link behavior.
aaaaaFor
future research it would be interesting to look into some additional
data in particular to understand the role of certain universities. As
has been debated in the literature the meaning of hyperlinks can be
very different reaching from administrative to content related reasons
(THELWALL, 2006). Therefore, we avoid to discuss our results in terms
of importance or collaboration or any other content based interpretation.
However, further analysis we have done with the data set elsewhere (ORTEGA,
2007) show that there are high correlations between web data based on
hyperlinks and other socio-economic or bibliometric data. That might
be an indication that web graph based on units of analysis of a high
level of aggregation as universities or countries are quite suitable
as indicators for structures in the academic European system. At least,
as our analysis show, for Europe we observe signs for cohesion and integration
on the background of still dominant national science systems and an
interesting interplay between "big players" in the field and
small countries. Therefore, it seems reasonable to repeat such kind
of exercise longitudinal to make trends visible.
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