Information Science: “A History of Webometrics”

A very informative and interesting read.

Title

A History of Webometrics

Author

Mike Thelwall
University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

Source

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
August/September 2012

From the Article:

The information science field of webometrics is “the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the web drawing on bibliometric and informetric approaches” or, more generally, “the study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals using techniques that are not specific to one field of study.
Webometrics currently provides a range of methods and software for various kinds of quantitative analyses of the web, and, despite initial concerns that web data would always be easily manipulated because they are not quality-controlled, the advocates of webometrics claim that it is useful both for studies of aspects of the web itself, such as hyperlinking among academic websites, and studies of offline phenomena that might be reflected online, such as political attitudes reflected in blogs.

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