About Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html


What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
Features of Google Scholar

• Search diverse sources from one convenient place
• Find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions
• Locate the complete document through your library or on the web
• Learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research

How are documents ranked?
Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.
A note from the Google Scholar team
Please let us know if you have suggestions, questions or comments about Google Scholar. We recognize the debt we owe to scholars everywhere whose work has made Google itself a reality and we hope to make Google Scholar as useful to this community as possible. We believe everyone should have a chance to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Google Scholar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely-accessible Web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature  across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest scholarly publishers. It is similar in function to the freely-available Scirus from Elsevier, CiteSeerX, and getCITED. It is also similar to the subscription-based tools, Elsevier's Scopus and Thomson ISI's Web of Science. Its advertising slogan — "Stand on the shoulders of giants" — is a nod to the scholars who have contributed to their fields over the centuries, providing the foundation for new intellectual achievements.

Google Scholar arose out of discussion between Alex Verstak  and Anurag Acharya, both of whom were then working on building Google's main web index.

In 2006, in response to release of Microsoft's Windows Live Academic Search, a potential competitor for Google Scholar, a citation importing feature was implemented using bibliography managers (such as RefWorks, RefMan, EndNote, and BibTeX). Similar features are also part of other search engines, such as CiteSeer and Scirus.

In 2007, Acharya announced that Google Scholar had started a program to digitize and host journal articles in agreement with their publishers; an effort separate from Google Book Search, whose scans of older journals do not include the metadata required for identifying specific articles in specific issues.

Objectives of the Webometrics Ranking of World's Universities

http://www.webometrics.info/about_rank.html

The original aim of the Ranking was to promote Web publication. Supporting Open Access initiatives, electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material are our primary targets. However web indicators are very useful for ranking purposes too as they are not based on number of visits or page design but on the global performance and visibility of the universities.

As other rankings focused only on a few relevant aspects, specially research results, web indicators based ranking reflects better the whole picture, as many other activities of professors and researchers are showed by their web presence.

The Web covers not only only formal (e-journals, repositories) but also informal scholarly communication. Web publication is cheaper, maintaining the high standards of quality of peer review processes. It could also reach much larger potential audiences, offering access to scientific knowledge to researchers and institutions located in developing countries and also to third parties (economic, industrial, political or cultural stakeholders) in their own community.

The Webometrics ranking has a larger coverage than other similar rankings (see table below). The ranking is not only focused on research results but also in other indicators which may reflect better the global quality of the scholar and research institutions worldwide.

We intend to motivate both institutions and scholars to have a web presence that reflect accurately their activities. If the web performance of an institution is below the expected position according to their academic excellence, university authorities should reconsider their web policy, promoting substantial increases of the volume and quality of their electronic publications.

About Webometrics

http://www.webometrics.info/about.html

The "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities" is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain.

Spanish Research Council main building CSIC is among the first basic research organizations in Europe. The CSIC consisted in 2006 of 126 centers and institutes distributed throughout Spain.

CSIC is attached to the Ministry of Education and its main objective is to promote scientific research as to improve the progress of the scientific and technological level of the country which will contribute to increase the welfare of the citizens.

CSIC also plays an important role in the formation of new researchers and technicians in the different aspects of the science and the technology.

The organization collaborates with other institutions of the Spanish R&D system (universities, autonomous governs, other public and private research organisms) and with social, economic, national or foreign agents to which contributes with its research capacity and human and material resources in the development of research projects or under the form of consultancy and scientific and technical support. CSIC was founded in 1939 from a previous body, the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas created in 1907 under the leadership of the Spanish Nobel Prize Prof. Ramón y Cajal.
CCHS building

The Webometrics Ranking

http://www.webometrics.info

Since 2004, the Ranking Web is published twice a year (January and July), covering more than 17,000 Higher Education Institutions worldwide. Web presence measures the activity and visibility of the institutions and it is a good indicator of impact and prestige of universities. Rank summarizes the global performance of the University, provides information for candidate students and scholars, and reflects the commitment to the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

We intend to motivate both institutions and scholars to have a web presence that reflect accurately their activities. If the web performance of an institution is below the expected position according to their academic excellence, university authorities should reconsider their web policy, promoting substantial increases of the volume and quality of their electronic publications.

If you need further clarification regarding the motivations of the Ranking or the methodology, please read the FAQ.

Important info

The section Premier League (Files) is the repository of the excel files for the Top 500 that can be used freely citing the source. We are unable to provide larger or previous years files.

The Directory of Universities has been revised and updated, adding more institutions from countries like Russia, India, Indonesia or Malaysia among others. A few entries has been deleted or modified as requested.

The major change introduced into this edition relates to the way the composite index (World Ranking) is computed as we are now combining normalized values instead of ranks. This change affects mainly to the Top universities but we are still providing the individual ranks for each indicator (as in previous editions).