Web Ranking of Universities

UDs; Trailblazer in Central Africa

Dschang,UDs/Sic-10/10/18.The July edition of webomatrics ranking of universities across the globe has been published by the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the “Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas” (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. CSIC’S main objective is to promote scientific research so as to improve the progress of the scientific and technological level of each country which will contribute to increase the welfare of its citizens. The Cybermetrics Lab, part of the CSIC, is devoted to the quantitative analysis of the Internet and Web contents specially those related to the processes of generation and scholarly communication of scientific knowledge. The goal of the webometrics ranking is to promote the presence of universities on the web, to support Open Access initiatives to transfer knowledge built at the University to society.

Since 2004, the Ranking Web (or Webometrics Ranking) is published twice a year (data is collected during the first weeks of January and July for publication at the end of both months), covering more than 27,000 Higher Education Institutions worldwide.

The University of Dschang sets the pace in Cameroon and Central Africa in the 2018 July ranking. She is ranked 1^st in Cameroon, stepping up from the 2^nd position which she held in the 2018 January edition in the CEMAC and CEEAC zones. In this region, the ranking is largely dominated by Cameroonian universities. The University of Dschang dominates for this purpose the Cameroonian universities of Buea (4137^th world), Douala (4619^th world) and Yaounde 1 (5183^rd world). On the continent, the University of Dschang is in the 4^th position in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, following the universities of Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (41^st in Africa), Abomey Calavi (43^rd) and Ouagadougou (53^rd), then UDs ranks 56^th in sub-Saharan Africa and 104^th in Africa.

The African ranking is dominated by Anglo-Saxon universities, especially South African universities. The latter also occupy the top 5 African universities. Globally, UDs is ranked at the 3596^th position. The world ranking is dominated by North American universities, led by the trio; Havard University, Standford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd in the world.

Appreciating the Performance According to the Classification Criteria

In the current edition, more than 28000 Universities and Institutions are classified. Among them, 1687 African universities were graded, and four of them are in the top 500 position globally. At the level of Africa, six Cameroonian universities are in the top 500. As concerns the ranking criteria, there are four classes divided into two broad categories: the visibility and impact of activities in search engines. This last category has three criteria: « excellence rank », « openness rank » and « presence rank ». The best world ranking of UDs comes from « excellence rank ». This criterion refers to academic work published in highly reputable scientific journals. The UDs ranks 2475^th in the world.

« The openness rank » is the criterion in which UDs records the best progression since it appeared in the webometrics ranking. « The openness rank » concerns open access to scientific publications and educational materials in different formats: PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint. The Scholar indicator is used here to measure university performance. It permits the calculation of the number of articles and quotes for each academic field using Google Scholar. In this criterion, the University of Dschang is ranked 3580^th ahead of the Universities of Buea (3909^th) and Yaounde 1 (4302^nd), thereby taking the first position at the national level.

Presence rank is the third criterion in this category. Presence rank refers to the number of web pages identified by search engines that redirect to / from the University. UDs occupies 15238^th place worldwide. The UDs owes this position thanks a regular update of its website and beneficial use of social networks (Facebook and Twitter).

The other category of the ranking is visibility. Its main criterion is « impact rank » compared to January 2018. « The impact rank » is, according to the methodology of the Cybermetrics lab, a weighting of 50% total of the performance, which takes into account the total number of unique incoming external links (inlinks). These are indeed the websites that speak of the University of Dschang without it being necessarily the official website of the institution. In this ranking, Dschang ranks 11281^st in the world.

The Fruits of Collective Dynamics

The University of Dschang earns its position as trailblazer in Cameroon and in the subregion, as well as its breakthrough at the continental and global levels, from the spirit of collective dynamics nurtured over a number of years. The spirit has boosted its increasing and impressive presence on the internet. In addition, the informal popularization of website content via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter also generate traffic to the website. The quality of teachers’ work and the strengthening of the online presence of teachers through blogs, articles in PDF and posts about them on information websites, allows search engines to better reference the University. This helps to make visible the activities of the institution on the web. The UDs, through this strategy of presence and visibility online, is part of the dynamic of the CSIS. For this Council, the presence of a university on the internet reflects « its investment in education, the results of its research, its international prestige and its links with its community and the economic and industrial sectors.

The Webometrics ranking is available here:

Cameroon: www.webometrics.info/en/Africa/Cameroon

Sub-Saharan Africa : www.webometrics.info/en/Sub-Saharan  

Africa : www.webometrics.info/en/Africa 

World : www.webometrics.info/en/world