Web use and peer interconnectivity metrics for academic web sites

Abstract

This paper introduces two new web link count metrics to complement the existing Web Impact Factor. The first is provisionally cast as an indicator of the average degree of online informal scholarly communication and information use by the academics in a given university. The second has a similar construction but focuses on the degree of web inter-connection in terms of both inlinks and outlinks. The latter metric is based upon a more elaborate mechanism than raw link counts: totalling the minimum number of links between universities over all distinct pairs in the chosen set that include the given institution. Statistical tests give evidence that the results of both correlate with institutional research productivity in the UK, providing preliminary support for their continued development. Further research is needed into causes of linking in order to allow more meaningful interpretations of their values to be made.