<p>Since the Web is increasingly becoming a popular place to publish and cite scientific research, a group has taken on the task of tracking the number and citation impact of papers published on the Web, much as has been done for many years for paper journals. Using this data they have ranked the universities on their research output/strength as reflected on the Web.</p>
<p>A brief summary of the method:</p>
<p>“The ranking is based on a combined indicator that takes into consideration the volume of the published material on the web, and the visibility and impact of these webpages measured by the sitations (site citations) or links they received (inlinks). It is derived from the Web Impact Factor, build on the same idea as the bibliographic databases based Impact Factor of the Journal Citation Reports published by the Institute of Scientific Information, now Thomson Scientific.”
Full text at their hompage: <a href=“http://www.webometrics.info/[/url]”>http://www.webometrics.info/</a></p>
<p>The ranking results:</p>
<li> MIT</li>
<li> UC Berkeley</li>
<li> Stanford</li>
<li> Illinois-Champaign/Urbana</li>
<li> Harvard</li>
<li> UT Austin</li>
<li> Univ. of Washington</li>
<li> Cornell</li>
<li> Michigan</li>
<li>Wisconsin</li>
</ol>
<p>Top non-US University: Cambridge at #20.</p>
<p>Full ranking of 2000 universities at:
<a href=“http://www.webometrics.info/top2000.asp[/url]”>http://www.webometrics.info/top2000.asp</a></p>
<p>Note: This study says NOTHING about the quality of the undregraduate experience, etc. This reflects the research (i.e. mostly graduate and professional school) capabilities of a university as reflected in web-based publications.</p>