2010 Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2010), "2010 Awards for Excellence", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 28 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lht.2010.23828daa.002

2010 Awards for Excellence

Article Type: 2010 Awards for Excellence From: Library Hi Tech, Volume 28, Issue 4

The following article was selected for this year's Outstanding Paper Award for Library Hi Tech

``Measuring the institution's footprint in the web''

Isidro AguilloCybermetrics Lab, Centre of Social Sciences and Humanities (CCHS), Madrid, Spain

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an alternative, although complementary, system for the evaluation of the scholarly activities of academic organizations, scholars and researchers, based on web indicators, in order to speed up the change of paradigm in scholarly communication towards a new fully electronic twenty-first century model.Design/methodology/approach - In order to achieve these goals, a new set of web indicators has been introduced, obtained mainly from data gathered from search engines, the new mediators of scholarly communication.Findings - It was found that three large groups of indicators are feasible to obtain and relevant for evaluation purposes: activity (web publication); impact (visibility) and usage (visits and visitors). As a proof of concept, a Ranking Web of Universities has been built with Webometrics data. There are two relevant findings: ranking results are similar to those obtained by other bibliometric-based rankings; and there is a concerning digital divide between North American and European universities, which appear in lower positions when compared with their USA and Canada counterparts.Research limitations/implications - Cybermetrics is still an emerging discipline, so new developments should be expected when more empirical data become available.Practical implications - The proposed approach suggests the publication of truly electronic journals, rather than digital versions of printed articles. Additional materials, such as raw data and multimedia files, should be included along with other relevant information arising from more informal activities. These repositories should be Open Access, available as part of the public web, indexed by the main commercial search engines. It is expected that these actions could generate larger web-based audiences, reduce the costs of publication and access and allow third parties to take advantage of the knowledge generated, without sacrificing peer review, which should be extended (pre- and post-) and expanded (closed and open).Originality/value - A full taxonomy of web indicators is introduced for describing and evaluating research activities, academic organizations and individual scholars and scientists. Previous attempts for building such classification were incomplete and did not take into account feasibility and efficiency.

Keywords Academic staff, Search engines, Worldwide web

www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/073788309

This article originally appeared in Volume 27 Number 4, 2009, pp. 540-56, Library Hi Tech

The following articles were selected for this year's Highly Commended Award

``Virtual research environments in scholarly work and communications''

Alexander VossRob Procter

This article originally appeared in Volume 27 Number 2, 2009, Library Hi Tech

``Public libraries: places creating social capital?''

Andreas Varheim

This article originally appeared in Volume 27 Number 3, 2009, Library Hi Tech