Webometric Evaluation of Institutional Repositories

Abstract

This research project investigated (a) whether there is a relationship between the Web Impact Factor (WIF) of an institutional repository, and conventional measures of research quality of the institution; and (b) whether a relatively new search engine, Blekko (http://blekko.com/) was a viable tool for webometric investigation. Blekko was used to count links made to the institutional repositories of Australasian universities. The WIF was calculated as the number of inlinks to the repository, divided by the number of documents at the repository. At the time of the research, Blekko's coverage of many of the institutional repositories was inconsistent, so only a subset of the repositories was used in the analysis, and the results are inconclusive. However there appeared to be a small correlation between the WIF of a repository and the QS World Ranking; and for Australian institutions, the WIF of a repository and the institution's ERA score.