Webometrics-2016: ASU has gone up 300 positions

4 February 2016 Public Relations Department

The results of prestigious international ranking Webometrics, which estimates world’s universities on the basis of their web-sites. In comparison with the previous year data, Altai State University has gone up 300 points at once in the global ranking.

It is to be recalled that the ranking is published by Cybermetrics Lab, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), located in Madrid. The purpose of the ranking is to increase universities’ and scientific and research institutes’ Web performance and to promote open publication of their research results. The ranking has been conducted since 2004 and is updated every January and July. Now it measures web-indicators of more than 12,000 world’s universities and is considered to be one of the most authoritative international rankings.

Unlike other universities’ international rankings that concentrate on characteristics of academic elite, Webometrics project is aimed at measuring all parts of higher education establishments’ activities and grading a big number of world’s universities. High assessment of a university’s web-site shows the policy of new technologies encouragement and the presence of resources for their development. Ranking indicators measure the volume, demonstrativeness and popularity of university site web-pages. Special emphasis is laid on scientific research results, which can be seen from the information given in online publications: monographs, dissertations, articles, records, conference reports. The information concerning courses, seminars, workshops, electronic libraries, databases is of great significance. Scientists’ and creative teams’ personal pages, information about university, its departments and employees are also taken into account. In some countries Webometrics data is one of the key indexes of university’s attractiveness for prospective students.

The broad coverage of world’s universities in Webometrics ranking and transparency of the results, which are published twice a year, encourage the majority of the universities to be more active in the Internet and allow judging higher education system not only by the leading universities, but by the whole complex of higher education institutions. There are representatives of all Russian constituent territories among top 3,000 world’s universities. Our country is ranked among 10 top countries by the number of national universities in the ranking.

According to Webometrics-2016, Altai State University has taken 3,325th place among the universities of the world. It is 300 positions higher that in 2015. Among Russian higher education establishments ASU takes 63rd position, going up by 3 places.

Other Altai universities lag behind ASU considerably. For example, Shukshin Biysk State Pedagogical University has only taken 82nd position, Altai State Technical University – 136th, Gorno-Altaisk State University – 146th, Altai State Agricultural University – 158th, Barnaul Law Institute under Ministry of Internal Affairs – 260th, Altai State Medical University – 298th and so on.

Head of the ASU IT Department M.A. Ryazanov commented on the successful results:

“During the last 6 months we have made a lot to increase ASU official website’s positions in the ranking. We have optimized it in terms of internal realization. For example, our department’s staff members have created the informational system that connects the university website and Case system. Now all ASU scientists’ academic works are available in PDF format and are downloaded from Case to the website. Thanks to Public Relations Department active work the number of backlinks to university’s website materials has increased. We have also implemented unique content management system that includes more than 100 word-processors. By virtue of that fact the amount of content has grown substantially in comparison with 2015. Our chief editor thoroughly rechecks all texts for orthographic, punctuation and stylistic mistakes. This is also very important, as Google and Yandex search engines pay great attention to the texts’ quality. The information on the website has become more structured, which means that users can find the necessary material more easily. The work on website improvement will be continued in 2016. We defer to staff members’ and students’ opinion on the website!”

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