ABSTRACT
Webometrics is an information science field concerned with measuring aspects of the World Wide Web (WWW) for a variety of information science research goals. It came into existence about five years after the Web was formed and has since grown to become a significant aspect of information science, at least in terms of published research. Although some webometrics research has focused on the structure or evolution of the Web itself or the performance of commercial search engines, most has used data from the Web to shed light on information provision or online communication in various contexts. Most prominently, techniques have been developed to track, map, and assess Web-based informal scholarly communication, for example, in terms of the hyperlinks between academic Web sites or the online impact of digital repositories. In addition, a range of nonacademic issues and groups of Web users have also been analyzed.
