RankCloud: A Cloud-Based Webometrics Ranking System

Abstract

The management of university web sites is becoming more critical than before due to the rapid growth of the population dependent on the World Wide Web as the most important information source. Webometrics Ranking of World Universities (WR) proposed by Centre for Scientific Information and Documentation (CINDOC-CSIC), which ranks the university web sites, has obtained much attention recently. In this paper, we proposed RankCloud as a foreknowledge system for Webometrics Rankings. It adopts web mining to gather the WR indices from the WWW automatically in flexible periods, and uses cloud computing to share useful information in real time for the managers of university web sites. If the web performance of an institution is below the expected position, university authorities should reconsider their web policy, promoting substantial increases of the volume and quality of their electronic publications. Besides, the web site managers may adopt website optimization to promote their WR rankings.