Analyzing the Activities of Visitors of the Leiden Ranking Website

doi:10.2478/jdis-2018-0015

Abstract

Abstract:

Purpose: To get a better understanding of the way in which university rankings are used.

Design/methodology/approach: Detailed analysis of the activities of visitors of the website of the CWTS Leiden Ranking.

Findings: Visitors of the Leiden Ranking website originate disproportionally from specific countries (regions). They are more interested in impact indicators than in collaboration indicators, while they are about equally interested in size-dependent indicators and size-independent indicators. Many visitors do not seem to realize that they should decide themselves which criterion they consider most appropriate for ranking universities.

Research limitations: The analysis is restricted to the website of a single university ranking. Moreover, the analysis does not provide any detailed insights into the motivations of visitors of university ranking websites.

Practical implications: The Leiden Ranking website may need to be improved in order to make more clear to visitors that they should decide themselves which criterion they want to use for ranking universities.

Originality/value: This is the first analysis of the activities of visitors of a university ranking website.

Key words: CWTS Leiden Ranking, University ranking, University ranking website, Web log analysis

Jan van Eck, Nees, and Ludo Waltman. "Analyzing the Activities of Visitors of the Leiden Ranking Website." Journal of Data and Information Science, vol.3, no.3, 2018, pp.81-98. DOI: 10.2478/jdis-2018-0015

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Country (Region)	Perc. of sessions	Avg. no. of views per session	No. of universities in the LR 2017
United States	9.6%	4.1	177
Australia	6.0%	4.7	25
Netherlands	6.0%	4.6	13
United Kingdom	5.8%	5.0	47
Turkey	5.6%	3.9	16
Iran	5.5%	5.8	18
South Korea	5.4%	5.8	35
France	5.2%	4.4	24
Germany	3.7%	6.0	50
Denmark	3.6%	4.6	5
Switzerland	3.4%	3.8	7
Spain	3.3%	5.4	34
Canada	3.0%	5.0	28
China	2.8%	3.9	138
Portugal	2.4%	5.9	6
Japan	1.8%	3.8	41
Italy	1.7%	5.8	39
Chinese Taiwan	1.5%	2.9	17
India	1.3%	4.7	20
Sweden	1.3%	6.3	10

Page	Perc. of sessions	Avg. no. of views per session
List view	92.5%	4.1
Chart view	10.3%	2.2
Map view	10.5%	1.8
University	23.1%	2.3

Setting	Description	Default choice
Time period	Choice of a time period	2012-2015
Field	Choice of a field of science	All sciences
Country (Region)	Choice of a region (i.e., continent) or a country (region)	World
Min. publication output	Choice of the minimum publication output that a university is required to have	100
Type of indicators	Choice between impact (citation) and collaboration (co-authorship) indicators	Impact
Indicators	Choice of specific impact or collaboration indicators	P, P(top 10%), PP(top 10%)
Order by	Choice of the indicator based on which universities are ordered; universities can also be ordered alphabetically based on their name	P
Counting method	Choice between full and fractional counting	Fractional counting

University	Country (Region)	Perc. of sessions
Harvard University	United States	3.3%
University of Toronto	Canada	1.9%
Zhejiang University	China	1.8%
University of Paris VI - Pierre and Marie Curie	France	1.6%
University of São Paulo	Brazil	1.6%
Utrecht University	Netherlands	1.5%
University of Copenhagen	Denmark	1.4%
University of Lisbon	Portugal	1.3%
Islamic Azad University Science & Research Tehran	Iran	1.1%
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology	South Korea	1.1%
University of British Columbia	Canada	1.1%
Rockefeller University	United States	1.1%
Tsinghua University	China	1.1%
Babeș-Bolyai University	Romania	1.0%
ETH Zurich	Switzerland	1.0%
University of Queensland	Australia	1.0%
University College London	United Kingdom	1.0%
Leiden University	Netherlands	1.0%
University of Cape Town	South Africa	0.9%
Seoul National University	South Korea	0.9%