Over the years, the Internet has become an increasingly popular medium for scientific discourse and publication, fuelled by the advancement of e-publishing and the push for 'open access' to information. Scientometric indicators of web based publications and their impact are, however, few and far between.

The Webometric Rankings of World Universities — compiled by the National Research Council in Spain — are designed to show worldwide institutions' commitment to web publication. Set up in 2004, they list the top 3000 universities in the world, based on both the volume of web content (productivity) as well as their visibility and impact in terms of the number of external links (citations) they receive. The rankings also assess research institutions and scientific academies by country and region.

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