National and international university departmental Web site interlinking. Part 1: Validation of departmental link analysis

The structural similarity between hyperlinks and citations has encouraged information scientists to apply bibliometric techniques to the Web. University links have been previously validated as a new data source through significant statistical correlations between link and research measures, together with identification of motivations for hyperlink creation at the university level. Many investigations have been conducted for university interlinking, but few for departments. University Web sites are large compared with departmental Web sites, and significant statistical results are more easily obtained. Nevertheless, universities are multidisciplinary by nature and disciplines may employ the Web differently, thus patterns identified at the university level may hide subject differences. This paper validates departmental interlinking, using Physics, Chemistry and Biology departments from Australia, Canada and the UK.