Methodological Issues of Webometric Studies

The contribution defines webometrics within the framework of informetric studies, bibliometrics, and scientometrics as belonging to library and information science, and associated with cybermetrics as a generic sub-field. It outlines a consistent and detailed link typology and terminology and makes explicit the distinction between the web node levels when using the proposed terminological structures. Secondly, the contribution presents the meaning, methodology and problematic issues of the central webometric analysis types, i.e., Web engine and crawler coverage, quality and sampling issues. It discusses briefly Web Impact Factor and other link analyses. The contribution finally looks into log studies of human Web interaction.

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