Folie 1

1
From Librametry to Webometrics Hildrun
Kretschmer1, Mike Thelwall2 1 Nerdi, NIWI, The
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands kretschmer.h_at_onlinehome
.de 2 School of Computing and Information
Technology, University of Wolverhampton,
UK m.thelwall_at_wlv.ac.uk
2
Abstract The development of information and
library sciences together with science studies
will, among other things, be fashioned by the
development of quantitative studies conducted in
this field. The terminology thus obtained shall
be perceived as a reflection of the technical,
social and political backgrounds of the
researchers. The technical redevelopment of
methods of communication through the Internet
presents a challenge for information scientists
to cultivate novel quantitative methods and
techniques in order to measure rates of
information exchange in this new medium. (This
paper was presented at the National Seminar on
Information Professionals for the Digital Era,
29th-30th January 2003, Chennai, India, and
published in the Proceedings, MALA, Madras
Library Association, edited by A. Amudhavalli,
2003)
3
Librametry/Librametrics versus Bibliometrics Som
e fifty years ago, at the Aslib Conference in
Leamington Spa in 1948, the term Librametry was
established by the famous Indian librarian S. R.
Ranganathan ...it is necessary for librarians
to develop librametry in the lines of biometry,
econometry and psychometry since many of the
matters connected with library work and services
involve large numbers... (Aslib Proceedings
1949, p. lO2). His suggestions were avidly
welcomed at the conference, notably also by
Bernal.
4
In preparation for this great event, Ranganathan
in the course of the preceding 20 years, i.e.
since 1925, had already successfully practised
the application of Elements of Statistical
Calculus to library problems. The success
accomplished had inspired him to introduce
publicly the term Librametry to the
above-mentioned conference (Gopinath, 1992). For
many years Ranganathan had worked in the library
of the University of Madras.
5

• Within the sphere of libraries, librametry was
  applied to a wide range of problems, performed by
  Ranganathan and other Indian scientists. The
  following uses below account only for some of
  them (Ranganathan, 1996, 1995 reprinted).
• Librametry in the day-to-day work of a library
• Librametry in organising national or state
  library systems
• Operations research in library work
• Librametry and book selection
• Librametry and classification
• Library administration
• Library services

6
In the first years following Ranganathan's
achievements there were hardly any responses to
his work in the western world. As a result, more
than 20 years after the introduction of the term
Librametry - sometimes also called
Librametrics - A. Prichard, the information
scientist, in 1969 coined the term
Bibliometrics as a redevelopment of the term
Statistical Bibliography for the quantitative
analysis of bibliographies (Sen, 1995). This
term was very rapidly accepted internationally,
with Bibliometrics being later also accepted by
Indian librarians.
7
However, at a later time, the well-known English
information scientist B. C. Brookes pointed out
regretfully (l990, p. 41) "Had I known of
Ranganathan's term in time, I would have adopted
librametrics for information studies and
bibliometrics for information science. But it was
too late. Librarians liked bibliometrics too".
Brookes (1990) attached importance to a
distinction to be made between Information
Science and Information Studies, with the former
term apparently being more theory-oriented and
the latter term more application-oriented, i.e.
going along the lines of the use of techniques
with a view to optimising Library Administrations
and Library Services.
8
Bibliometrics versus Scientometrics/Informetrics
Looking at the historical development in our
field it becomes obvious that for some years the
term Bibliometrics has apparently been
suffering a similar fate to the term
Librametry. It seems as if the term
Bibliometrics has become subordinate to the
term Informetrics. Leo Egghe and Ronald
Rousseau in 1987 heralded the advent of the
henceforth biannually held international
conferences with the First International
Conference on Bibliometrics and Theoretical
Aspects of Information Retrieval, which took
place in Diepenbeek, Belgium. However, Jean
Tague, in organizing her conference, went beyond
the term Bibliometrics and gave an enlarged
name to the subsequently held international
conference Second International Conference on
Bibliometrics, Scientometrics and Informetrics.
This Conference was held in l989 in London,
Ontario, Canada.
9
The underlying reason was that, independently of
the other two terms mentioned above, the term
Scientometrics had been coined by Vassily V.
Nalimov in Russia at the end of the 60s (Hood
Wilson, 2001) and had later been extended to
Hungary, The Netherlands and to Spain. The term
Scientometrics is said to encompass all
quantitative aspects of studies in the field of
science of science, communication in science and
science policy. The supporters of
Scientometrics had taken the view that their
subject matter could not be covered by the term
Bibliometrics. Hence, we had to face the above
enlargement of terms in the title of the Second
International Conference.
10
It was interesting to see that the Proceedings of
the Second International Conference involved a
surprise. The editors Leo Egghe and Ronald
Rousseau ...strongly endorse the use of the term
informetrics... (Informetrics 89/90, p.V.).
They took the view that Bibliometrics and
Scientometrics were both subordinate to the
term Informetrics. Accordingly, the subsequent
conference held in Bangalore, India, in 1991, was
given the title Third International Conference
on Informetrics (Chair I.K. Ravichandra Rao).
11
During the preparations for the next conference,
scheduled to be held in Berlin, Germany in l993
(Chair Hildrun Kretschmer) serious problems had
arisen at a preceding conference held in Leiden,
The Netherlands. At the Leiden conference the
theme was Science and Technology Indicators -
Evaluation in Science and Technology.
Understandably, a major part of the participants
had come from Science Policy. Officially, the
idea was to exclude Informetrics from the
title, since the subject Evaluation could not
be logically subordinated to Informetrics.
However, the Berlin conference was held under the
title Fourth International Conference on
Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics.
12
Generally speaking, the participants could be
subdivided into two distinct scientific groups,
with members of both groups representing fairly
separate scientific interests. While the members
of Bibliometrics/Informetrics had come from
libraries or information and documentation
centres, the Scientometricians had their homes
in centres of science studies or sociological
institutions. The first mentioned group was
primarily concerned with classical bibliometric
laws, growth, principles underlying informetric
distributions or the non-Gaussian nature of these
distributions, etc., whereas the second group
was substantially concerned with
science-policy-oriented subjects, such as
evaluation of science and technology. By
contrast, both groups were united in their common
approach to using the same identifiable objects,
such as the number of publications, number of
quotations, publications, etc. as the points of
departure for their empirical studies.
13
For all these persistently recurring problems,
the development of the subject matter had
meanwhile reached a stage that required the
foundation of an international society at the
Berlin conference in l993. The result of
discussions with Invited Speakers at the Plenary
Session on Bridging the Gaps between
Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics
at the constituent assembly of the society was to
give the Society the title International Society
for Scientometrics and Informetrics
(I.S.S.I.). Henceforth, i.e. from l995 on in
Chicago, U.S.A. (Chair Michael Koenig) the
biannually held international conferences were
termed International Conference on
Scientometrics and Informetrics. Thus the term
'Bibliometrics' used at the first international
conference in Belgium in l987 has disappeared!
Clearly, there was a certain measure of agreement
that Bibliometrics could be subordinate to
Informetrics. By the way, however, the term
Bibliometrics, in contrast to
Librametry/Librametrics, continues to be used
in research.
14
For all these persistently recurring problems,
the development of the subject matter had
meanwhile reached a stage that required the
foundation of an international society at the
Berlin conference in l993. The result of
discussions with Invited Speakers at the Plenary
Session on Bridging the Gaps between
Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics
at the constituent assembly of the society was to
give the Society the title International Society
for Scientometrics and Informetrics
(I.S.S.I.). Henceforth, i.e. from l995 on in
Chicago, U.S.A. (Chair Michael Koenig) the
biannually held international conferences were
termed International Conference on
Scientometrics and Informetrics. Thus the term
'Bibliometrics' used at the first international
conference in Belgium in l987 has disappeared!
Clearly, there was a certain measure of agreement
that Bibliometrics could be subordinate to
Informetrics. By the way, however, the term
Bibliometrics, in contrast to
Librametry/Librametrics, continues to be used
in research.
15
Apart from these political changes there are
technical changes that have made an impact. The
new information technology by way of the Internet
has called many old techniques into question.
Will library services still be needed in their
old form? In Europe, for instance, some library
institutes and information centres are being
closed down. Questions will be raised whether
or not the well-known old methodologies
underlying librametrics, bibliometrics,
informetrics and scientometrics will still be
capable of serving their original purposes in the
age of the Internet, or whether it is now time to
devise new methods? Of course, this new
development has to be taken into account in
training the future generation.
16
Björneborn, L. Ingwersen, P. (2001) point out
that a new research field, webometrics, has
emerged since the mid-1990s and furthermore that
(p.65) Webometrics displays several
similarities to informetric and scientometric
studies and the application of common
bibliometric methods. Therefore, the new
approach to quantitative measurement in the
Internet, webometrics, devised and established
only recently in Europe and Israel, should be
given great attention as a new European
perspective.
17
Webometrics Probably the biggest changes in
methods for information exchange in the West over
the past ten years have all been driven by the
potential of the Internet. Digital libraries (Fox
Urs, 2002) are one visible incursion into the
domain of librarians, and today much more general
information is electronic and available over the
Internet. In the West, librarians seem to be
keeping their traditional roles, perhaps in a
reduced form, but moving into new areas, helping
users to search for information from a much
greater variety of sources, many online.
Information science research has also changed,
with much research into how the new technologies
are being used, particularly email (Herring,
2002) and the web (Cronin, 2001 Kling McKim,
2000).
18
In addition to user studies there have been
attempts to extract new kinds of information from
the web, for example examining the relationship
between areas of the web by counting the number
of hyperlinks between them (Ingwersen, 1998).
These kinds of studies have grown out of
bibliometric analyses of the citations in
published journal articles (Vohora et al., 2001
Borgman, Furner, 2002). In this paper we will
give a brief overview of web link research and
introduce a new European Union-funded project
into this area, part of the emerging field of
webometrics.
19
Web Hyperlink Research Bibliometrics is the
sub-area of informetrics for the quantitative
study of aspects of documents. One of the main
techniques used is to examine the relationships
between academic journal articles through
patterns that emerge from their reference
sections. For example, if one article cites
another then this will normally mean that either
the content in the cited article has been found
useful or relevant in some way (Cronin, 1984).
Citation can also be used by mapping software to
draw pictures of the relationships between
articles, authors, journals or academic fields
(Small, 1999).
20
Given the extensive use of citations, several
information scientists have noted their
similarity to hyperlinks in web pages and have
sought to exploit this to extract new information
from those links (Larson, 1996 Rodríguez Gairín,
1997 Almind Ingwersen, 1997 Rousseau, 1997).
The thesis of Larson (1996) for instance, was
that the relationship between a set of web pages
on a given topic could be visualised by plotting
them together with the hyperlinks between them.
21
Recent research has focussed not upon individual
hyperlinks but upon counting links to and from
web sites or other areas of the Web. Ingwersen
(1998) used the advanced search capabilities of
the search engine AltaVista to count links to and
from entire countries. AltaVista allows Boolean
queries based upon words, links and domain names
(http//www.altavista.com/web/adv). For example
the link command requests pages that link to the
given URL or partial URL, and host requests pages
that are hosted by the given domain name. The
following example is a request for all web pages
from the University of Delhis Institute of
Informatics and Communication web site
(http//www.iic.ac.in) that contain a link to a
page in the National Institute of Science,
Technology and Development Studies
(http//www.nistads.res.in).
22
linknistads.res.in and hostiic.ac.in Note
that the initial www. is omitted in case there
are multiple domain names for the same site. This
occurred in the example above, with the domain
name euindia.iic.ac.uk, also belonging to the
University of Delhis Institute of Informatics
and Communication. This gives the following
results
23
Figure 1. A section from the AltaVista results
showing the discovery of a page hosted by the
University of Delhis Institute of Informatics
and Communication that links to the National
Institute of Science, Technology and Development
Studies. The URL of the page is
http//euindia.iic.ac.in/networkpartners.php
24
Figure 2. A section from the linking page showing
the link identified by AltaVista. The URL of the
page is http//euindia.iic.ac.in/networkpartners.p
hp and the link to http//nistads.res.in/ is
described at the bottom.
25
The Boolean query facility, and similar features
offered by other search engines such as
AllTheWeb.com, are new tools with which to map
the web. Other researchers have also used a web
crawler to collect data on hyperlinks (Thelwall,
2001a). This is a program that automatically
fetches pages from the web and extracts their
links. The advantage of this approach is
greater control over the process of finding and
extracting links, but its disadvantage is that a
research crawler can only hope to crawl a limited
subset of the web.
26
It should be noted that the extent of use of the
web varies by country. For example, in the UK,
all universities have large web sites and these
typically attract thousands of links from web
pages from other universities. In India, however,
not all universities have their own web sites yet
(see http//www.imsc.ernet.in/webserv/servers.ht
ml) and the page and link counts for the set
that we investigated were found to be very low.
For example, the University of Delhi had 103
pages recorded by Google, and 267 links from the
rest of the world (using the query
linkdu.ac.in AND NOT hostdu.ac.in). See
Figure 3 for a selection of results.
27
Figure 3. A section from the AltaVista results
showing the discovery of 267 pages that link to
Delhi University. The first six pages with a
matching link are desribed.
28
Hyperlinks and Informal Scholarly
Communication Journal article citations have
been investigated by information scientists for
well over 30 years, but there is still
controversy over basic issues such as whether
citation counts are useful to help measure
research quality (Moed, 2002 Vohora et al.,
2002). The same debate has now started for
hyperlinks. What can counts of hyperlinks be
usefully used to show? If a web site has many
links pointing to it, then is this a good
indicator that it has high quality content? Also,
can hyperlinks be used to trace online scholarly
communication? A series of studies have given
some insights into why hyperlinks are created in
academic settings and whether they are related to
scholarly communication. The data for these
studies has come from the university Web sites of
a country.
29
The first question asked was whether counting
links to university or departmental web sites
would be a valid measure of research impact, in
the way that citation counts might be. Although
early results were disappointing (Thelwall, 2000
Thomas Willett, 2000) later studies found
statistically significant correlations in both
cases (Thelwall, 2001b 2002a Chu et al., 2002
Li et al., 2003 Tang Thelwall, 2002). This
gave evidence that hyperlinks bore some
relationship to scholarly communication, although
they were not necessarily caused directly by it.
In fact academic research may or may not use the
web and even if it does, may not leave a trace in
the form of hyperlinks (Kling McKim, 2000). A
recent paper reported on a survey of the creation
reasons for a random sample of 414 random
hyperlinks between UK university web sites
(Wilkinson et al., 2003).
30
It was found that whilst less than 1 were
equivalent to journal citations, in terms of
citing a refereed academic document, over 90
bore some relationship to scholarly activity.
This is strong evidence that link counts are
indicators of informal scholarly communication.
An institution with high research productivity
should naturally expect to have a high degree of
informal scholarly communication, some of which
will probably include the creating and attracting
of hyperlinks.
31
Applications of Link Counts Link counts for
universities have been suggested as a (weak)
proxy for university research quality in
countries where there are no comparative figures
available (Thelwall et al., 2001). They have also
been suggested as alternative indicators of
journal impact, both as a double-check on the
Institute for Scientific Informations (ISI)
figures and to apply to journals not covered by
them (Vaughan Thelwall, 2003).
32
Links have also been used to track and analyse
patterns of online scholarly communication within
the European Union (EU) (Thelwall et al., 2003).
Counts of links between EU universities were
obtained from AltaVista and broken down by
language of the linking page. It was found that
English Language pages and links were very
prominent throughout, accounting for
approximately 50 in nearly all countries. In the
UK and Eire, English accounted for almost all
pages, whereas in Greece under 10. From this the
importance of English on the academic web was
very clear , but also the fact that it was being
used in tandem with national languages.
33
The WISER Project The EU has recently financed a
new consortium from England, The Netherlands and
Spain to investigate further the potential to
create new indicators from the web for use in
science and technology policy making. This is a
three-year project that started in November 2002
and is one possible direction for the future of
information science research. One of the main
products of the project will be a Best practice
manual for Web data use in indicator research.
This will take the form of a publicly available
web site and will present best practice
recommendations. An initial version will soon be
available, with a finished version produced at
the end of the project. This will be an ideal
resource for those wishing to start webometric
investigations (www.webindicators.org).
34
It will give detailed recommendations on how to
collect data, the various options for analysing
and reporting it, and hints on how to interpret
the final results. In addition to the production
of the handbook, there will be several projects
that investigate different aspects of the web,
including links, gender aspects and the deep Web.
The link studies will also investigate colinks.
Two web pages are colinked if they are both
linked to by a third web page. Colinks are used
by search engines to indicate similarity of page
content if two pages are colinked then they are
more likely to be about the same subject than two
that are not (Thelwall Wilkinson, 2004).
Cocitations are also used in bibliometrics to
generate pictures of the relationships between
authors (White McCain, 1998) or fields (Small,
1999). The colink study will investigate whether
useful tools for mapping science and technology
on the web can be built from co links.
35
The gender studies will investigate whether there
are differences in the way that male and female
scientists and technologists are perceived on the
web. This is likely to be a much more qualitative
study because it would be very difficult to
ascertain for each individual web page whether it
was created by a man or woman. As a result of
this, the link counting tools will be
ineffective. The deep Web, also known as the
invisible web, is the name given to the set of
web pages that are not indexed by search engines,
perhaps because they are in an online database
and a query must be typed to find them. The WISER
project will investigate science and technology
content in the deep Web and report on the
importance of deep Web content. In summary, the
WISER project will provide useful resources for
those wishing to start Webometrics and
information on the potential of a range of new
Webometric techniques.
36
Acknowledgement This work was supported by a
grant from the Common Basis for Science,
Technology and Innovation Indicators part of the
Improving Human Research Potential specific
programme of the Fifth Framework for Research and
Technological Development of the European
Commission. It is part of the WISER project (Web
indicators for scientific, technological and
innovation research) (Contract HPV2-CT-2002-00015)
(www.webindicators.org).
37
References Almind, T. C. Ingwersen, P. (1997).
Informetric analyses on the world wide Web
methodological approaches to Webometrics.
Journal of Documentation, 53(4)
404-426. Björneborn, L. Ingwersen, P. (2001).
Perspectives of webometrics. Scientometrics. 50
( 1), 65-82 Borgman, C Furner, J. (2002).
Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. In
Cronin, B. (ed.), Annual Review of Information
Science and Technology 36, Medford, NJ
Information Today Inc., pp. 3-72. Brookes, B.C.
(1990). Biblio-, sciento-, infor-metrics??? What
are we talking about? In Egghe, L. Rousseau,
R. (Ed.). Informetrics (89/90). Amsterdam
Elsevier Science Publisher. 31-44 Chu, H., He,
S. Thelwall, M. (2002). Library and information
science schools in Canada and USA A Webometric
perspective. Journal of Education for Library
and Information Science 43(2), 110-125. Cronin,
B. (1984). The citation process the role and
significance of citations in scientific communica
tion. London Taylor Graham.
38
Cronin, B. (2001). Bibliometrics and Beyond
Some thoughts on Web-based citation analysis.
Journal of Information Science, 27(1), 1-7.
Egghe, L. Rousseau, R. (1990). Preface. In
Egghe, L. Rousseau, R. (Eds.). I nformetrics
(89/90). Amsterdam Elsevier Science Publisher.
p. V Fox, E. A. Urs, S. R. (2002), Digital
libraries. In Cronin, B. (ed.), Annual Review of
Information Science and Technology 36, Medford,
NJ Information Today Inc., pp.
503-589. Gopinath, M.A. (1992). Shiyali Ramamrita
Ranganathan A Profile in Relation to
Librametry. In Ravichandra Rao, I.K. (Ed.).
Informetrics 91. Bangalore Sarada Ranganathan
Endowment Library Science, 9-16 Hood, W.W.
(2001). The literature of bibliometrics,
scientometrics, and informetrics.
Scientometrics, 52(2), 291-314 Herring, S. C.
(2002). Computer-Mediated Communication on the
Internet. In Cronin, B. (ed.), Annual Review of
Information Science and Technology 36, Medford,
NJ Information Today Inc., pp.
109-168. Ingwersen, P. (1998). The calculation of
Web Impact Factors. Journal of Documentation,
54(2), 236-243. Kling, R. McKim, G.
(2000). Not Just a Matter of Time Field
Differences in the Shaping of Electronic Media
in Supporting Scientific Communication. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science,
51(14), 1306-1320. Kretschmer, H. Thelwall, M.
(2003). The development of information
professionals The European perspective The way
from librametry to webometrics. In A.
39
Amudhavalli (Ed), Proceedings of the MALA
Platinum Jubilee Celebrations, National Seminar
on Information Professionals for the Digital Era,
Madras, India, January 29-30, 2003, EFEX
Chennai, 2003, 13-25 Larson, R. (1996).
Bibliometrics of the World Wide Web An
exploratory analysis of the intellectual
structure of Cyberspace. In Proceedings of
ASIS96, 71-78. Retrieved July 1, 2002, from
http//sherlock.berkeley.edu/asis96/asis96.html
Li, X., Thelwall, M., Musgrove, P. Wilkinson,
D. (2003). The relationship between the
l inks/Web Impact Factors of computer science
departments in UK and their RAE ratings or
research productivities in 2001. Scientometrics,
57(2), 239-255. Moed, H. F. (2002) The
impact-factors debate the ISIs uses and limits,
Nature, 415, 731-732. Ranganathan, S.R. (1995,
Reprint from 1969). Librametry and its Scope. The
International Journal of Scientometrics and
Informetrics, 1(1), 15-21. Rodríguez Gairín, J.
M. (1997). Valorando el impacto de la informacion
en Internet AltaVista, el "Citation Index" de
la Red, Revista Espanola de Documentacion
Cientifica, 20175-181. Available
http//www.kronosdoc.com/publicacions/altavis.htm
Rousseau, R. (1997). Sitations an exploratory
study, Cybermetrics, 1. Available
http//www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v
1i1p1.html
40
Sen, S.K. (1995). Introduction. The International
Journal of Scientometrics and Informetrics,
1(1), 3-5. Small, H. (1999). Visualising science
through citation mapping, Journal of the American
Society for Information Science, 50(9),
799-812. Tang, R. Thelwall, M. (2002).
Disciplinary Differences in US Academic
Departmental Web Site Interlinking, SUNY
Albany. Thelwall, M. Binns, R. Harries, G.
Page-Kennedy, T. Price E., and Wilkinson, D.
(2001). Custom Interfaces for advanced queries
in search engines, ASLIB Proceedings, 53(10),
413-422. Thelwall, M., Tang, R. Price, E.
(2003). Linguistic patterns of academic Web use
in Western Europe, Scientometrics, 56(3),
417-432. Thelwall, M. Wilkinson, D. (2004, to
appear). Finding similar academic Web sites with
links, bibliometric couplings and colinks.
Information Processing Management. Thelwall,
M. (2000). Web Impact Factors and Search Engine
Coverage, Journal of Documentation, 56(2),
185-189. Thelwall, M. (2001a). A Web crawler
design for data mining, Journal of Information
Science 27(5) 319-325. Thelwall, M. (2001b).
Extracting macroscopic information from web
links, Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 52 (13),
1157-1168. Thomas, O. Willett, P. (2000).
Webometric analysis of departments of
Librarianship and information science. Journal
of Information Science, 26(6), 421-428.
41
Vaughan, L. Thelwall, M. (2003). Scholarly use
of the Web What are the key inducers of links
to journal Web sites? Journal of the American
Society for Information Science and Technology,
54(1), 29-38. Vohora, S. B., Shah, Z. A.
Vohora, D. (2001). Low impact factors for Indian
journals. Do factors other than quality
influence? Current Science 81(8), 867. White, H.
D. McCain, K. W. (1998). Visualizing a
discipline an author co-citation analysis of
information science, 1972-1995, Journal of the
American Society for Information Science, 49(4),
327-355. Wilkinson, D., Harries, G., Thelwall,
M. Price, E. (2003). Motivations for academic
Web site interlinking Evidence for the Web as a
novel source of information on informal
scholarly communication, Journal of Information
Science, 29(1), 59-66.