Assessment of scientific presence of Estonia in web; a new Approach

Hamzehali Nourmohammadi1

A. Keramatfar2

1 nourmohammadi.h@gmail.com

Shahed University, Tehran, Iran

Shahed University, Tehran, Iran

Key Words: Scientific ranking, Webometrics, Scopus, CEE Countries.

1. Introduction

Since the mid-1990s, a new research area called webometrics based on bibliometric and

informetrics methods has been created [Norouzi, 2006]. Webometrics is the quantitative

analysis of the web phenomenon employing methods of informetrics [Bjoneborn, Ingwersen,

2004]. Due to the importance of the Web, some studies dealing with webometrics seek to

describe web and offer diverse statistics about some of the features and capabilities of the

Web sites [Noroozi Chakoli, 2012]. In EERQI analysis, the need for new retrieval and

clustering techniques, and webometrics method mentioned (EERQI, 2008).

On the other hand, the Web has developed into the most important scholarly communication

tool and has made more and more scientific information accessible [Kargar, 2011].

The present paper seeks to investigate the situation of Estonia on the basis of the Rich Files

and to compare it with other CEE countries. On the other hand, it attempts to have a review

of the status of scientific output, number of publications is an indicator of Scientific power

(Vinkler, 1986), of Estonia in Scopus –that is one of the databases for scientific assessment-

and to compare it with other CEE countries. Lastly, this paper will check whether there exists

a correlation between the number of the CEE countries Rich Files and the number of their

scientific product. In other words, we shall attempt to discover if the number of the Rich

Files could represent the scientific ranking of a given CEE country?

The Rich files, consisting of PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, have been singled out as the basis of

our analysis because the majority of the scientific products are being issued in this these files

formats since Webometrics1, in its scientific assessment of universities, employs the number

of Rich Files as one of its criteria which calls it Openness.

1. Methodology

The present paper operates within the field of webometrics. The key and essential tools for

webometrics researches are extensive search engines [Noruzi, 2006]. This study employs

Bing search engine, the third popular search engine [alexa.com]. Therefore, the presented

numbers are based on Bing index and are estimations of fact. To extract the number of Rich

Files in the Bing advance search section, first a country is chosen and then filetype:pdf,

filetype:doc, and filetype:ppt are input in its search box.

To discover the number of scientific products for a given country in Scopus, the expression

AFFILCOUNTRY(X) - with X being the name of the country- was used in advance search

section.

To investigate the existence of correlation between the ranking resulted from the number of

Rich Files and the ranking resulted from the number of articles Spearman correlation was

employed by SPSS.

List of CEE countries was extracted from Wikipedia2 and data were collected in February

2013.

2. Purpose of the Study

The most significant purpose of this research is to demonstrate a new approach for the

scientific ranking of CEE countries, similar to what ESI or SJR does, however this new

approach is based on webometrics method. Meanwhile, CEE contries will be ranked both

based on the number of documents in Scopus and the number of Rich files with an emphasis

on Estonia.

3. Findings

The Results of the study are presented in three subsections based on the questions raised

in the section2:

3.1 situation of Estonia on the basis of the Rich Files in comparison to CEE countries

1 webometrics.info

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_and_Eastern_Europe

The results of this article illustrate that Germany has the highest number of Rich Files in CEE

Contries followed by Poland and Czech Republic. Estonia has 238900 Rich Files on web and

based on the number of Rich files is tenth in CEE countries. Lithuania has 274000 Rich Files

and is ninth; Latvia has 138000 Rich Files and is eleventh. Table 1 shows ranking on the

basis of Rich files:

Table 1. Number of CEE Countries Rich Files Country PDF DOC&DOCX PPT Sum Germany 10300000 315000 84000 10699000 Poland 2100000 368000 38200 2506200 Czech Republic 905000 143000 29100 1077100 Hungary 838000 172000 29000 1039000 Romania 872000 146000 14000 1032000 Slovakia 480000 78800 12300 571100 Croatia 402000 63300 15600 480900 Bulgaria 309000 128000 10100 447100 Lithuania 274000 92200 10100 376300 Estonia 194000 34300 10600 238900 Latvia 138000 6940 4180 149120 Bosnia-Herzegovina 72600 12000 1610 86210 Macedonia 38400 6260 701 45361 Albania 4310 5200 75 9585 Slovenia 53 12 1 66 Serbia 0 0 0 0 Montenegro - - - - Kosovo - - - -

3.2 Review of the status of scientific output of Estonia in Scopus, compared with other

CEE countries

The first three contries appear in exactly the same order in ranking based on the number of

documents in Scopus.

Based on the number of documents in Scopus, Estonia has 20323 documents and is twelfth

among CEE countries, higher than Latvia with 12546 documents, and lower than Lithuania

with 25735 documents. . Table 2 shows ranking on the basis of document in Scopus:

Table 2. Number of CEE countries documents in Scopus Country Number of document Germany 2686860

Poland 460466 Czech Republic 192930 Hungary 174702 Romania 113479 Bulgaria 72340 Croatia 62029 Slovakia 61234 Slovenia 54048 Serbia 29198 Lithuania 25735 Estonia 20323 Latvia 12546 Macedonia 5942 Bosnia-Herzegovina 4632 Albania 1649 Montenegro 1086 Kosovo 0

3.3 If the number of the Rich Files could represent the scientific ranking of a given CEE

country?

Finally, it was concluded that the correlation between ranking of CEE contries based on Rich

Files and ranking of CEE countries based on scientific documents in Scopus is significant at

the 0.01 level and the correlation coefficient is .844. It signifies that ranking based on Rich

files for CEE countries is valid.

Conclusion

The study showed a way to compare scientific power of CEE countries using webometrics

method. Since the web information exposure without any scientific assessment on websites,

webometrics data are different from citation indexes data, hence this data has lower quality

and this means that in the end more webometrics instead of solid evidence, offers the

awareness [Noroozi Chakoli, 2012]. So told there is a correlation between rankings of CEE

contries based on Rich Files and ranking of CEE countries based on scientific documents in

Scopus.

Based on this method Germany, Poland and Czech Republic are First Class to the third,

Estonia ranked tenth.

References:

An analysis and evaluation of existing methods and indicators for quality assessment of

scientific publications (2008). European Educational Research Quality Indicators (EERQI).

Vinkler, P (1986). Evaluation of some methods for the relative assessment of scientific

publications. Scientometrics, Volume: 10, Issue: 3-4, pp:157-177.

Noruzi, Alireza (2006). The Impact Factor: A Critical Review. The Electronic Library, 24.

Kargar, Mohammad Javad (2011). University Website Ranking from Usability Criteria Perspective; A Case Study in IRAN. International Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology(IJACT). Vlume3, Number1

Bjoneborn, Lennart, Ingwersen, Peter (2004). Toward a Basic Framework for Webometrics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Noroozi Chakoli, Abdolreza (2012). Introduction to Scientometrics. Webometrics Ranking of World Universities’, URL : www.webometrics.info.