1. Academic Competitiveness and Website Rankings
Alina Andreica, Carmen Ciplea
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

2. Topics Proficient IT strategies Academic websites Webometrics
Goals
Evaluation: organizational, technical
Traffic, feed-back / log analysis
Webometrics
Romanian institutions’ ranking
BBU positioning & measures for rank improvement
BBU web site
Conclusions

3. Strategies for Implementing ICT within Organizations
Organization objective & activity target field
Management style & strategy
Financial Resources
Human Resources Policy
The larger the organization, its resources &investments, the more relevant are ICT “consequences”
IT strategy must be designed according to the organization’s goals & resources adjusted & approved by management levels

4. Strategies for Implementing ICT within Organizations
ICT implementations should be adapted to:
The aim of the organization & activity target field
different objectives and target fields impose specific characteristics on IT strategies
Financial resources / possibilities
the degree of willingness to invest in ICT depends on involvement & awareness of IT benefits

5. Strategies for Implementing ICT within Organizations
ICT implementations should be adapted to:
Human resources policy – in IT
create proper strategies within a plan of efficient ICT implementation
network admins, software developers, project managers
Management style and strategy –
Integrating IT strategy into the overall management strategy
awareness of IT efficiency

6. Academic web sites goals
Promote the university’s
Educational programs
Research programs
E-learning programs
Social responsibility programs
Alumni
Ensure communication means
towards the public community

7. Academic web sites goals
BBU specifics
Multicultural character – linguistic policy
Tradition & dynamism
Research & educational opportunities - Competitive programs
Comprehensive structure
Bridging Eastern-Western cultures
High quality infrastructure
Student tutorial support

8. Web sites evaluation
Organizational – the degree in which it complies to the organization’s goals, requirements, resources and level of development –information relevance, content structuring, visual identity and facilities should comply these requirements
Technical – accessibility, navigability, interactivity, density –criteria list adapted from a procedure proposed within the Marketing Institute of the Westfalische Universität Münster

9. Technical Web sites evaluation
Accesibility – navigability characteristics, speed and simplicity in finding the desired information
all pages and hyperlinks are functional
free / password based access to information; the site includes contact information
help / FAQ section, confidentiality terms / terms of use ;
Interactivity – images and animation should be attractive but not excessive
if additional software is needed to view the content (for example Flash Player), it should be downloadable
are advertising objects included on the page ? (excessive ads are not recommended and often companies who are greedy in placing other ads create themselves a better image) ;

10. Technical web sites evaluation
information density – information should be logically structured, easy to find
well-adjusted and balanced between home and secondary pages
images and graphs highlighten the content
pages display a pleasant design;
information up-to-date – the site should display the date of releasing the information and the date of the last update
copyright mark and reference should also be present;
information accuracy and correctness –published information should be correct, relevant and detailed in respect with user needs
if the information doesn’t belong to the site owner, references should be specified

11. Web sites evaluation Web analytics tools
Traffic - for example the analyser
Ranking in search engines -
Color contrast (readability) – for example the analysor
Speed in page loading – for example the analyser
a web site should be systematically monitored by feed-back analysis using traffic and log information analysis

12. Academic Web rankings
Cybermetrics Research Group – part of the National Research Council of Spain, proposed an Internet ranking methodology of academic institutions
since the mid of this decade, based on its prior researches in web metrics indicators
aims at revealing the importance measuring the Internet (web) data for evaluating scientific activity, competitiveness & impact

13. Academic Web rankings
The proposed indicators are:
Visibility – the number of external links to the evaluated domain – the methodology synthesizes the results obtained from Yahoo search engine (previously also from s Google, Live Search and Exalead) and normalizes the obtained values;
Size – the number of pages in the evaluated domain – the methodology synthesizes the results obtained from Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead search engines (results are normalized, best and worst values excluded, and then the average value is computed);

14. Academic web rankings
Rich files – the number of the files posted in the evaluated domain; following types are taken into account: .pdf - Adobe Acrobat PDF file, .ps - Adobe Postscript file, .doc - Microsoft Word file, .ppt - Microsoft Powerpoint file;
Scholar – the number of published papers in internationally indexed databases and citations – originated from the academic domain
the evaluation is performed using Google Scholar application
The final rank WR [webm] is obtained by weighting 50% the visibility indicator V, 20% the size indicator S and 15% the rich files RF and scholar SC indicators:
WR=4*V+2*S+1*RF+1*SC

15. Webometrics ranking
Webometrics Ranking of the best placed Romanian universities in the World's Universities Webometrics Ranking at July (lower rank is a better hierarchy position) / Source: – accessed July 28, 2009
Top 6 webometrics

16. Webometrics ranking BBU evolution in Webometrics hierarchy 2008-2009
Source:
Note: lower rank represents a better position

17. Webometrics ranking
Evolution of best placed Romanian universities in Webometrics hierarchy
Note: good ranking of technical universities since January 2009

18. Web rankings

19. Consistency & security problems
Trojan Clicker.html virus threat
Infects php applications – moodle calendars, blogs, forums, galleries by fraudulously inserting into the page source (tens to) hundreds of external links, in most cases invisible, void or automatically generated
Fraudulous increase in the number of external links for some academic institutions with tens / hundred thousands external links / week !
Distorsion of visibility ranking!

20. BBU main website

21. BBU Admission web site

22. BBU Students web site

23. BBU International students web site

24. BBU News

25. BBU academic extensions

26. Development directions
Increasing the webometrics visibility indicator by activating international cooperations, as well as academic and public partnerships;
Continuing to increase the webometrics size indicator by including all BBU chairs, research centres, institutes and academic extensions within BBU domain ubbcluj.ro
Implemented measures: websites for conferences – conference.ubbcluj.ro, grants – granturi.ubbcluj.ro, institutes – institute.ubbcluj.ro , academic extensions – extensii.ubbcluj.ro

27. Development directions
Continuing to increase the webometrics size & rich files indicators by taking advantage of the decentralized structure of BBU website:
developing web sites at all BBU levels – faculties, centres, institues, chairs;
developing the conferences, research projects, international programs web sites within ubbcluj.ro domain;
posting relevant information files on these websites;
Developing staff web sites
Continuing to increase the scholar indicator by extending the publication of BBU’s research activity in internationally recognized journals and publishing houses, indexed in scientific databases

28. Conclusions Adaptation to organization’s goals – BBU specific features
Web sites evaluation tools
Traffic analysis & feed-back monitoring
Web rankings & criteria
Webometrics criteria
Size, visibility, rich files, scholar
Ranking accuracy ensurance
Strategies for ranking improvement