UQ receives impressive international web ranking

UQ has been ranked in the top one percent in the world for academic web presence.

UQ is only one of three Australian universities to make the prestigious top 100, coming in ahead of the University of Melbourne and well-known Northwestern University and the University of Leeds.

The Cybermetrics Lab placed UQ 83rd from 12,000 higher education institutions for its “Webometrics Ranking of World Universities”.

Simon Collyer, of the UQ Information Technology Services Project Office, estimates there are about 30,000 web pages using the university's domain and receive approximately 1.7 billion web requests each year.

“For UQ the web has become the largest and most important campus with 25,000 students logging-on to the web based eLearning system alone, every single day during the semester,” Mr Collyer said.

The ranking measures university web presence, specifically involving research, however also considers academic missions, teaching, community engagement and knowledge, and technological transfer.

“The goal is to provide a complete overview of the academia worldwide, without using subjective criteria or excluding universities solely by technical reasons and guaranteeing no economical or political interests affect the scores,” said Isidro F. Aguillo, Head of the Cybermetirics Lab.

The findings, conducted at the Cybermetrics Lab, part of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid, is Spain’s largest research body, and has been bi-annually publishing its rankings since 2004.

“In this edition a new indicator has been applied for reflecting more accurately the academic impact of web contents,” said Aguillo.

The current report constitutes a robust evaluation resource that can be useful worldwide, said Aguillo.

Media: Simon Collyer ITS Project Office (07 3346 6960. S.collyer@uq.edu.au) or Allison Rock UQ Office of Communications (07 3365 2619, Allison.rock@uqconnect.edu.au)