Measuring the web impact of digitised scholarly resources

Abstract

PurposeWebometric studies, using hyperlinks between websites as the basic data type, have been used to assess academic networks, the “impact factor” of academic communications and to analyse the impact of online digital libraries, and the impact of digital scholarly images. This study aims to be the first to use these methods to trace the impact, or success, of digitised scholarly resources in the Humanities. Running alongside a number of other methods of measuring impact online, the webometric study described here also aims to assess whether it is possible to measure a resource's impact using webometric analysis.Design/methodology/approachLink data were collected for five target project sites and a range of comparator sites.FindingsThe results show that digitised resources online can leave traces that can be identified and used to assess their impact. Where digitised resources are situated on shifting URLs, or amalgamated into larger online resources, their impact is difficult to measure with these methods, however.Originality/valueThis study is the first to use webometric methods to probe the impact of digitised scholarly resources in the Humanities.