Web links as an indicator of research output:a comparison of NZ Tertiary Institution links with the PBRF assessment

Alastair G. Smith School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington

Mike ThelwallSchool of Computing & Information Technology, University of

Wolverhampton

Overview

Compared: Web links between NZ Universities 2003 Performance Based Research

Funding (PBRF) research assessment exercise

The Universities University of Auckland University of Canterbury Victoria University of Wellington University of Otago Waikato University Lincoln University Massey University Auckland University of Technology

PBRF Purpose: to allocate government

research funding Rated individual researcher portfolios:

Research outputs Indications of peer esteem Contributions to the research environment

Overall measures: Overall research output (sum of ratings) Quality score (portfolio ratings/FTE)

Correlations: web-based measures / PBRF Quality Score

-0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8

Page Inlinks/FTE

DirectoryInlinks/FTE

Domain Inlinks/FTE

Page Outlinks/FTE

DirectoryOutlinks/FTE

DomainOutlinks/FTE

WIF

Domain inlinks/FTE & PBRF Quality Scores

Auckland

AUT

Massey

Otago

Canterbury

VUW

Waikato

Lincoln

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35

Domain inlinks/FTE

PB

RF

qu

alit

y sc

ore

Links between institutions

Auckland

VUW

Canterbury

Otago

Waikato

Massey

Conclusions Link counts broadly correlate with

PBRF Consistent with UK findings Inlinks/staff member a useful measure Pattern of linking not uniform Future research:

rankings for subject areas Include links from outside NZ Include other tertiary institutions