This project was created in response to the need for research into web links: including web link mining, and the creation of link metrics. It is aimed at providing the raw data and software for researchers to analyse link structures without having to rely upon commercial search engines, and without having to run their own web crawler. This site will contain all of the following. *Complete databases of link structures of collections of academic web sites. *Files of summary statistics about the link databases. *Software tools for researchers to extract the information that they are particularly interested in. *Descriptions of the methodologies used to crawl the web so that the information provided can be critically evaluated. *Files of information used in the web crawling process.

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in accordance with the requirements for the Masters' Degree in Library and Information Science in the Department of Library and Information Studies, at the University of Zululand, 2019. / This research sought to explore informetrics education in Library and Information Science (LIS) departments in South Africa. This study adopted the pragmatic epistemology and pluralistic ontology. The abductive approach was considered appropriate for this study. The employed mixed research methods were survey and content analysis. The survey research methods, through questionnaire, were used to collect data from the LIS heads of departments (HODs) and informetrics lecturers. On the other hand, the content analysis was employed to analyse the content of course outlines. The study‟s population was all LIS departments in South Africa. Nine LIS departments were targeted and responses were received from eight LIS departments. Five of the eight departments were found to offer informetrics education. These were the LIS departments from the University of Cape Town, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, University of Limpopo, University of Western Cape, and the University of Zululand. The LIS department at the University of Zululand is the only department that offers informetrics education as autonomous module/course in the full programme. Other LIS departments offer it as a chapter/Unit in a module. Three LIS departments (University of Cape Town, University of Limpopo, and University of Western Cape) offer informetrics as module component at a Masters level. The LIS department at the University of Zululand offers informetrics education to level three and four undergraduate students in two programmes- BLIS and BIS. The University of Limpopo also offers it at an undergraduate level (level two, three and honours). The content analysis revealed that the scope of informetrics is broad in the essence that there is no uniformity in the content of informetrics across all LIS departments. The blended learning method is widely used: cased studies, group discussions, and online teaching and learning methods are commonly used for informetrics education. Numerous challenges that surround informetrics education were pointed out. Most of them are linked to the consideration that informetrics is broad, ICT reliant and dynamic. The solutions to the challenges were suggested. The study concluded that there is very limited informetrics education in South Africa. The study recommended that LIS departments create awareness about informetrics education, develop informetrics curricula, provide short courses on informetrics, and keep up with the trends in LIS education internationally.

This study investigated the distribution of bibliographic records amongst online bibliographic databases. The topic of Fuzzy Set Theory over the period of 1965 to 1993 was chosen to provide the case study for this investigation. From the DIALOG database host, searches were conducted on 114 databases to determine the number of journal article records relating to the topic of Fuzzy Sets. Both the number of records in each database, as well as the overlap of coverage between the databases were calculated. Six counting techniques were developed to allocate records to databases based on different methods for handling records that were duplicated between databases. When duplicate records are included, the top database accounts for 19% of the records; when duplicates are removed, the top database was found to account for 37% of the records. The distribution of records in databases was found to conform to the Bradford-Zipf hyperbolic distribution. Various other analyses were undertaken including: the duplicate records themselves, the total size of the DIALOG database system over time and the density of Fuzzy Set records in databases over time. A secondary aim of this study was to perform an informetric study on the literature of Fuzzy Set Theory itself. Results obtained include an analysis of the growth of the Fuzzy Set literature, an analysis of the journals covering the topic of Fuzzy Sets, an analysis of the terminology used in describing topics related to Fuzzy Sets. Also, the Ulrich's database was used to provide a subject classification of the journals to analyse the diffusion of the topic of Fuzzy Sets into other disciplines. Apart from the discipline of mathematics, the top disciplines into which Fuzzy Sets have diffused were found to be applied physics, systems and computing. The third aim of the thesis was to refine and develop the methodology used to perform large scale informetric studies using data from a variety of online bibliographic databases. Commercially available software was used wherever possible, but where this was not possible or infeasible, custom written programs were developed to perform various steps in the methodology.

The paper Fundamental methodologies and tools for the employment of webometric analyses defines the most important rules to keep in mind before performing webometric analyses. The paper deals with the two basic elements, that constitutes the foundation for webometric analyses: the documents being analysed, and the tools that are applied for the data collection. The concepts of a citation theory and a link theory are discussed through a study of the current litterature. Different methodologies for uncovering motivations for making references in scientific articles are reviewed and discussed. A methodology for uncovering motivations for making links on webpages is proposed and applied on six researchers' websites at the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Denmark, and on all the institutes at the same institution and at selected institutes at The Technical University of Denmark. The paper further contains a review on the linktopology of the Internet and the current status for the tools available for data collection. Finally, alternative possible tools for applying webometric analyses are proposed. The alternative tools are the Researchindex invented by Lawrence and Giles (Lawrence, Bollacker & Giles, 1999b; Giles, Bollacker & Lawrence, 1998), Kleinberg's HITS algorithm employed in the Clever search engine (The Clever Project, n.d.; Kleinberg, 1998), Proposals for possible extensions to the HTTP protocol to facilitate the collection and navigation of backlink information in the world wide web made by Chakrabarti, Gibson and McCurley (Chakrabarti, Gibson & McCurley, 1999c) and finally Link Agent, a program we have developed for this paper. The program makes it possible to uncover the reciprocal linking webpages, that exist in relation to the outgoing links from a chosen webpage. Keywords: Informetrics, Webometrics, Citation theory, Link theory, Motivations for links, Motivations for references, Search engines, Webometric tools

This paper provides an overview of how technology has changed the relationships between the library catalogue, the catalogue user, alternative sources of bibliographic data, and the resources described in the catalogue. It looks--from a technical perspective--at what those changes mean for the way we support various interfaces to the catalogue, and it highlights changes in approach that will be needed in order to maintain and enhance the effectiveness of those interfaces in an evolving networked environment.

Many online retailers monitor visitor traffic as a measure of their storesâ success. However, summary measures such as the total number of visits per month provide little insight about individual-level shopping behavior. Additionally, behavior may evolve over time, especially in a changing environment like the Internet. Understanding the nature of this evolution provides valuable knowledge that can influence how a retail store is managed and marketed. This paper develops an individual-level model for store visiting behavior based on Internet clickstream data. We capture cross-sectional variation in store-visit behavior as well as changes over time as visitors gain experience with the store. That is, as someone makes more visits to a site, her latent rate of visit may increase, decrease, or remain unchanged as in the case of static, mature markets. So as the composition of the customer population changes (e.g., as customers mature or as large numbers of new and inexperienced Internet shoppers enter the market), the overall degree of visitor heterogeneity that each store faces may shift. We also examine the relationship between visiting frequency and purchasing propensity. Previous studies suggest that customers who shop frequently may be more likely to make a purchase on any given shopping occasion. As a result, frequent shoppers often comprise the preferred target segment. We find evidence supporting the fact that people who visit a store more frequently are more likely to buy. However, we also show that changes (i.e., evolution) in an individualâ s visit frequency over time provides further information regarding which customer segments are more likely to buy. Rather than simply targeting all frequent shoppers, our results suggest that a more refined segmentation approach that incorporates how much an individualâ s behavior is changing could more efficiently identify a profitable target segment.

The authors describe a large-scale, longitudinal citation analysis of intellectual trading between information studies and cognate disciplines. The results of their investigation reveal the extent to which information studies draws on and, in turn, contributes to the ideational substrates of other academic domains. Their data show that the field has become a more successful exporter of ideas as well as less introverted than was previously the case. In the last decade, information studies has begun to contribute significantly to the literatures of such disciplines as computer science and engineering on the one hand and business and management on the other, while also drawing more heavily on those same literatures.

This study examines the differences between Scopus and Web of Science in the citation counting, citation ranking, and h-index of 22 top human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers from EQUATOR--a large British Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration project. Results show that Scopus provides significantly more coverage of HCI literature than Web of Science, primarily due to coverage of relevant ACM and IEEE peer-reviewed conference proceedings. No significant differences exist between the two databases if citations in journals only are compared. Although broader coverage of the literature does not significantly alter the relative citation ranking of individual researchers, Scopus helps distinguish between the researchers in a more nuanced fashion than Web of Science in both citation counting and h-index. Scopus also generates significantly different maps of citation networks of individual scholars than those generated by Web of Science. The study also presents a comparison of h-index scores based on Google Scholar with those based on the union of Scopus and Web of Science. The study concludes that Scopus can be used as a sole data source for citation-based research and evaluation in HCI, especially if citations in conference proceedings are sought and that h scores should be manually calculated instead of relying on system calculations.

Environment and Planning B (forthcoming) / To be published in Environment and Planning B (2007; forthcoming). Abstract: The citation impact of Environment and Planning B can be visualized using its citation relations with journals in its environment as the links of a network. The size of the nodes is varied in correspondence to the relative citation impact in this environment. Additionally, one can correct for the effect of within-journal â selfâ -citations. The network can be partitioned and clustered using algorithms from social network analysis. After transposing the matrix in terms of rows and columns, the citing patterns can be mapped analogously. Citing patterns reflect the activity of the community of authors who publish in the journal, while being cited indicates reception. Environment and Planning B is cited across the interface between the social sciences and the natural sciences, but its authors cite almost exclusively from the domain of the Social Science Citation Index.

[English abstract] The procedures by which library collections can be evaluated are quite diverse, and some are rather complex. The Cantor Set Theory is applied with a structuralist approach as a methodological aid to decision-making about the collections development. The methodology suggested here makes use of local holdings information based on an evaluative study of the Spanish university library collections.