Arab universities on the web: a webometric study

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Web Impact Factor of Arab universities.

Design/methodology/approach

The study included 99 universities representing 20 Arab countries. The advanced search facility of AltaVista was used for data collection. Two rounds of data collection were conducted to retrieve the links as well as the web presence of the included universities.

Findings

Jordanian universities represent 40 per cent of the top ten universities with the revised web impact factor. However, this was not the case in terms of the universities' web presence. Results indicated a strong correlation between external links and web presence.

Research limitations/implications

The variability of search engine results and the unavailability of some university web sites are limitations to the study.

Originality/value

By investigating, for the first time, the Web Impact Factors of Arab universities as well as the relation to other variables such as language, the paper will provide universities with some measure of how they are viewed by the outside world.

Citation

Elgohary, A. (2008), "Arab universities on the web: a webometric study", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 374-386. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810879518