Web is already the main scholarly communication tool ◦ OAI (Open Access Initiatives) Web...

Web is already the main scholarly communication tool◦ OAI (Open Access Initiatives)

Web publication is richer and diverse covering both scientific and educational activities◦ Especially informal communication

Web presence increases visibility of institutions and the impact of their activities◦ But there is a larger than expected academic digital

divide◦ There are important barriers to the presence of

scholars and their activities in the Web◦ In the near future Web indicators will be an important

part of the evaluation procedures◦ Web Search engines are the new knowledge

intermediaries and web positioning is becoming more and more relevant

• Of our research/scholarly manuscripts, and other knowledge we generate, a good estimate is that only 1-4% of the worlds academicians can afford to buy/subscribe and have the opportunity to read and benefit from them

• Many in poor countries (and some in rich countries) do not even know of the fantastic theories and literature that scholars like in your University have produced

A picture is worth a 1000 words ……

… only if someone sees it

Live or not (definitely live, everything is always in a state of flux, and knowledge is generated every minute) • Number of files on your PC keep growing in a live

university• Why have they not changed for us on the

Internet for such a long time?

With so many great thinkers under one roof, there is a lot of what we generate that can

be shared

200 Top UniversitiesWebometrics Ranking (January’07)

• As academicians, all of us are anxious to get our work published, for all the good reasons

• You can accomplish much more by making your work public, via the Internet (a demo later will illustrate)

• If publishing is so important, and publishing on the Internet is easier than chasing publishers, then what is the reason for this delay and inertia?

• No better way to– Benefit others with your knowledge– Getting cited and tracking your citations

• What is your weight in the scholarly world? (Will let you answer) (visit http://scholar.google.com and enter site:uqu.edu.sa)

And … now in the age of Internet, everyone of us

can be a publisher

• The manuscript that is prepared and submitted the first time to the publisher is called a prePrint

• We have a provision in our university at (KFUPM) to publish prePrints, visit eprints.kfupm.edu.sa

• It is the property of the organization where the employee worked to generate both the knowledge and the manuscript

• Only the version that has been reviewed by the publisher, edited by him/her for language (value addition), and printed in the journal after signing of the copyright form is subject to terms of copyright

• The entire academic world is sharing knowledge --- why not UQU?

• Course work & Lecture Notes, Seminars, Project Presentations, Conference Presentations, Theses Presentations, Coop/Summer-Training reports, Submitted papers, White papers, Project reports (progress and final), to name a few can be published on our websites

• Even rejected papers (Lutfi Zadeh’s initial works)• Even our committee reports (non-confidential

documents) are good study documents for the world to benefit

• The number of pages on the Internet is growing at the rate of almost 10,000,000 a day

What is our share?

Best way to attract excellent faculty Best way to market yourself and your school

for collaboration Easy for aspiring junior faculty to get

promoted On google alone there are over 200 Million

search queries per day

Who did people ask before google?

Should the knowledge we generate be a part of the

response?

Institutional Policies◦ You can recommend

Ownership – University’s Enforcing /Incentivizing Web publications (how?)

Funding Promotion of candidates Annual Evaluation Teaching Evaluation

Policies◦ Research committee

All conference papers submitted for support must have full searchable text files on the faculty’s website

Previous publications must also be available to support

Project reports (if support is from research project)

PowerPoint presentation to be made must also be available

A website for each project approved (sample)

Policies◦ Dossier on the web◦ Preprints of all journal/conference publications

and technical reports: (a separate section for 5 selected publications)

◦ No communication with the candidate except via the website he updates whenever he wills Reviewers do not get printed material, nor do the

committee members

Policies◦ Last two years publications on the website◦ Also: All

teaching material on the website project reports on the web patent documents on the web committee reports on the web

◦ Any other supporting documents that can be made public or will help enhance the image of the university

SiteMaps (for all sites, and updated) Make sure the crawlers visit your site and pick pages (Webmaster

tools) Training (many do not know that it is simpler than using MSOffice) Storage and Backup Updating the web and making sites which are simple to index

◦ No frame for example◦ No big size pages

Generating Templates for Faculty Pages and Departmental Pages Easily Uploadable Tools for Rich Files Make Research Documents Searchable Contact other organizations for Backlinks (Link exchanges)

◦ Universities worldwide◦ Local/International Forums (Islamicfinder.org, for example)◦ Collaborating with google scholar (particularly for material

in the library, UQU Journal of Islamic knowledge, etc.)

Improving Umm-Ul-Qura University‘s

Web presence

Technicalities

Sadiq M. SaitMakkah, Saudi Arabia, 19 November 2008

GOOGLE YAHOO LIVE EXALEAD ASK GIGABLAST Top Level Domain

site:xxSite Explorer

xxsite:xx site:xx site:xx inurl:xx site:xx

Institutional Domain

site:aa.xxSite Explorer

aa.xxsite:aa.xx site:aa.xx

site:aa.xxinurl:aa.xx

site:aa.xx

Directory site:aa.xx/bbSite Explorer

aa.xx/bburl:aa.xx/bb url:aa.xx/bb inurl:aa.xx/bb url:aa.xx/bb

Word in the URL

inurl:bb inurl:bb inurl:bb inurl:bb inurl:bb suburl:bb

Links to domain

NOSite Explorer

aa.xxlinkdomain:aa.xx link:aa.xx NO link:aa.xx

Links to URL

link:aa.xx/bbSite Explorer

aa.xx/bblink:aa.xx/bb link:aa.xx/bb NO link:aa.xx/bb

CountryAdvanced

SearchAdvanced

Searchloc:XX country:xx

AdvancedSearch

NO

LanguageAdvanced

SearchAdvanced

Searchlanguage:zz language:zz

AdvancedSearch

NO

Filetype filetype:yy originurlextension:yy filetype:yy filetype:yy NO type:yy

OPERATORS SEARCH ENGINE'S SYNTAX (JANUARY'07)

Number of pages recovered from four engines: Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead. For each engine, results are normalised to 1 for the highest value. Then for each domain, maximum and minimum results are excluded and every institution is assigned a rank according to the combined sum (37,900)

In google, enter site:uqu.edu.sa

04/21/23ITC Services & Projects 25

The total number of unique external links received (inlinks) by a site can be only confidently obtained from Yahoo Search, Live Search and Exalead. For each engine, results are normalised to 1 for the highest value and then combined to generate the rank (10,500 for UQU, 14 from domain:edu)

In yahoo.com, enterlinkdomain:uqu.edu.sa -site:uqu.edu.sa


After evaluation of their relevance to academic and publication activities and considering the volume of the different file formats, the following were selected: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt). These data are extracted using Google.

site:kfupm.edu.sa filetype:pdf


Google Scholar provides the number of papers and citations for each academic domain. These results from the Scholar database represent papers, reports and other academic items (55 for UQU).

http://scholar.google.comsite:uqu.edu.sa


=4*RankV+2*RankS+1*RankR+1*RankSc


Content is the key:o Visibility is measured by the number of external in-links

Quantity, diversity, organization, freshness and originality of the contents increase the number of visits

Visitors are candidate web authors for linking visited pagesGoogle’s Page Rank: Ranking algorithm combining visibility and

web pages importance.Portals and directories transfer high PR to website listed on them

o Rich formats are usually reserved to the quality information, including scientific papers

Web archiving own or hosted documents increases the impact of the websites: Open Access initiatives, self-archiving, institutional or thematic repositorieso Popularity refers to the visits received by the

website Number, origin and behavior of the visitors should be

monitored in any web strategy project

• Barriers to crawlers– Hostile design

•Flash without embedded links•Javascripts/Java with incomplete URLs

– Orphaned pages (not linked from others) (Open Directory Listing)• Invisible Web

– Gateways to databases without categories– Dynamic pages with long URLs

• Lazy Webmasters– “Dead” links, Irregular Contents update, No title or META, bad

URLs, few alternative formats (pdf, ppt, doc, ps)

INSTITUTIONAL LINKING

DEEP LINKING

HIGH PAGERANK

YAHOO

ODP

WIKIPEDIA

UNIVERSITIES

VERTICALPORTALS

KFUPM.EDU.SA

REGION PDF DOC PPT PS SCHOLAR

NORTH AMERICA 29914 4311 2468 2020 5833

LATINAMERICA 22907 5032 1814 1104 8194

EUROPE 18150 2659 930 2043 3619

AUSTRALIA 13476 2252 899 449 3144

ASIA 17033 4627 2698 935 5487

AFRICA 6680 2780 1200 2010 1470

TOP 500 23572 3550 1748 1904 4806

Web is becoming more important for academic institutions

Web contents are easier to publish, cheaper to distribute and they reach far larger audiences

Scholars still are not prone to publish on the Web, but in the meantime US universities are providing A LOT of info on their websites

Web success is related to the volume and quality of the information provided

Web visibility and impact is correlated with the institution overall performance

Middle and Long term strategies◦ Open access mandatory◦ Vertical initiatives: From personal to

institutional repositories◦ Horizontal initiatives: Libraries!

Increase web cooperation with other academic institutions of the country and the region◦ Exchange links◦ Cooperative repositories

Develop web positioning policies Open/distance learning initiatives Exploit the future: Building broadband and

multimedia repositories


Thank you

Web is already the main scholarly communication tool ◦ OAI (Open Access Initiatives) Web...

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