The Webometrics Ranking Web of Universities international project issued a ranking of universities and institutes, having evaluated their presence in the Internet. In the latest edition, SUSU climbed up for 141 positions and was placed the 1914th out of 12 000 universities included in the ranking.
“Inclusion in the top-2000 of Webometrics means that our university is actively and efficiently developing, despite strong competition. This also signifies that the financial support that we get from the government within Project 5-100 is being efficiently invested in our most valuable capital – in our scientists, teaching staff, research fellows and postgraduates,” noted Leonid Sokolinsky, the SUSU Vice-Rector for Informatization.
Among European universities, South Ural State University climbed up for 57 positions and was placed the 696th. In Russia, SUSU is placed the 25th.
Webometrics evaluates websites of universities as well as their presence in the Internet, taking into account various indicators. Awareness of the university is being evaluated: external links to a university’s website and its mentioning is calculated. Also, points get assigned depending on the number of pages at a university’s website and the amount of highly-ranked articles published by representatives of the educational institution: this precise parameter provided SUSU the highest augmentation in the new ranking’s edition. The last indicator is the number of citations in Google Academy.
“In order to strengthen our positions in the next year as well, I think we need to focus on the Visibility parameter, i.e. on the number of external links to the university’s website,” believes Leonid Borisovich. “Right now our website is very good, comparing to both foreign and Russian universities, which itself has been reflected in the ranking. But we need to keep promoting our website, which, in turn, will get reflected in the increasing number of external links to the university’s portal.”
Presently, testing of the system of automated generation of pages for employees and subdivisions is being tested in the university. This technical novelty will significantly simplify the process of creating new pages at the university’s website – now they will appear automatically on the basis of data from the Univeris system. Such approach is expected to allow increasing the total number of pages at the university’s website, which, in turn, will lead to strengthening of its positions in the Webometrics ranking.