Annals of Library and Information Studies

Vol. 58, June 2011, pp. 128-138

Web link analysis of interrelationship between top ten African universities and
world universities
Janet Adekannbi

Doctoral Student, Africa Regional Centre for Information Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Email: janet.adekannbi@gmail.com

Data for the exploratory study on web link analysis were extracted using the AltaVista search engine. A sample of 2395
links was selected using proportional-to-size sampling technique while individual link was selected using systematic
sampling. The data were analysed using the frequency and percentage distributions. The results of the analyses showed that
73.7% of the links were from the Top Ten African Universities to the Top Ten World Universities; whereas these Ten
African Universities received only 26.3% inlinks from the Top Ten World Universities. It was also found that most of the
outlinks from the Top Ten African Universities were to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (27.3%) while the highest
number of inlinks were from Stanford University (21.8%). The study concludes that African universities showed more
interest in linking to the world class universities; a trend that was not reciprocated by the world universities. The low level of
links received by the African universities was probably due to the fact that African universities in general have only recently
embraced the many features of the World Wide Web. It is recommended that African universities should improve their
presence on the web and incorporate ranking in their web relationship with other universities which should significantly be
tailored to benefits that could be received from academic activities.

Introduction the international reputation and position of

The World Wide Web (WWW) was born primarily to
ease knowledge dissemination among academic
institutions1. Expectedly, it constitutes one of the
available avenues for universities to source and
provide information for purposes ranging from
advertisement of their academic activities, admission
processing, information dissemination to staff and
students, teaching and research2. Previous studies
have however shown that African universities are
poorly represented on the WWW. For example,
Onyancha and Ocholla3 reported that African
universities did not feature in the Times list’s 200 top
ranking universities and only the University of Cape
Town, the University of Witwatersrand, the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, and the University of
Pretoria made an appearance in the top 500 of the
Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s list. This trend was
repeated in a webometric ranking of world
universities, conducted by InterLab, which listed the
top African university (i.e. the University of Cape
Town) at number 5464.
Ranking has become unavoidable, and they will
remain part of the academic life. General ideas about
universities will continue to be influenced
considerably by ranking5. Largely, webometric
indicators address issues such as web links, web
visibility and impact in terms of the number of
external links received by a host level domain. These
indicators have been applied to several university web
studies in the developed countries6-8, and developing
countries like India9-11 where they have been used to
assess the productivity of researchers and their
institutions and establish relationship among various
universities12-18.
Noteworthy is the observation that a few web link
studies in Africa, for instance Nwagwu and Agarin19
and Onyancha and Ocholla20 have also investigated
inter-university web connectivity among African
universities. The former reported that web sites of
Nigerian universities do not interlink and the latter
showed that while few inter-university connectivity
was observed in the web sites of universities in
Kenya, universities in South Africa have fairly
developed networks among themselves. Findings
from the study also revealed that all the links between
Kenyan and South African universities emanated
 ADEKANNBI: WEB LINK ANALYSIS OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOP TEN AFRICAN & WORLD UNIVERSITIES
from the latter. In view of the literature available on
web links, this study established the need to
investigate inter-university web connectivity among
African Universities and the top World universities
ranked webometrically.
Hence, the chief aspect of this study is to assess
whether there is any web relationship among African
universities and the top world universities and
evaluate the relationship vis-à-vis the ranking of these
universities. This evaluation is imperative in view of
the fact that counting web links between institutions
has been described as a useful exercise in identifying
patterns of international recognition of one institution
by another and determining information flow21. In
addition to this is the notion that rankings of
universities serve as a means of comparing academic
institutions, thus creating a positive competition
between them22. Evidence from research showed that
there is a relationship between link count to
universities and their rankings. Universities with
higher average peer-review ratings attracted more
links per faculty member to their web sites in the
UK23 and New Zealand24. A similar relationship was
found for Australian universities, using a government
calculation for research funding25.
Literature review
Web links have been studied by information scientists
for over a decade now. Web link research in
information science started with Larson26, Rousseau27,
and Almind and Ingwersen28, all using an analogy
between citations and hyperlinks to trigger
explorations into web link research. This was
followed by further investigations by Ingwersen29 and
Leydesdorff and Curran30 amongst others. Several
studies on web links have subsequently been carried
out with many of them focusing on sites with
academic content 31-50.
A few reported hyperlink studies have focused on
international academic web interconnectivity. Smith51
used a hyperlink-based metric to compare university
web sites in Australasia and Latin America. The
study reported that Australasia web sites received
higher visibility whereas for linguistic reasons, Latin
American sites did not receive the attention that they
deserve from the World Wide Web except for the few
that were in English. In a similar study, Thelwall et
al52 surveyed the linguistic dimensions of web site
129
hosting and interlinking of the universities of 16
European countries. Smith and Thelwall53 studied
UK, Australian and New Zealand University
interlinking, discovering that links between different
institutions in the same country dwarfed international
links and that New Zealand was relatively isolated on
the web. A larger follow-up study by Thelwall and
Smith54 mapped the interlinking between universities
in the Asia-Pacific region showing that Australia and
Japan were central web players in the region, as they
were the major sources and targets for academic links.
A case study of inter-regional and intra-regional web
connectivity was investigated by Park and Thelwall55.
In this study, Park and Thelwall examined the
connectivity structure of links between university
websites in 25 Asian and European countries. The
five most linked-to universities in each nation-state
were selected and the results suggested that the UK
apparently had a significant influence on other
websites, attracting over one-quarter of all
(international) inlinks. The study further showed that
Universities’ websites in Asia are more heavily
connected to European universities than linked to
each other. European countries’ universities
dominated the overall networks, in terms of being the
largest sources and targets of links. The highest
ranked Asian countries were Japan and Singapore.
Small countries in both regions were the least linked,
a pattern which seems to be for larger, richer
countries to be better linked, with wealth being more
important than size. Aguillo56 used five major search
engines to carry out a cybermetrics analysis of Indian
universities, observing that English is the predominant
language of the Indian academic web space and that
ten academic institutions are among the first hundred
most visible Indian web sites.
In Africa, only one study by Onyancha and Ocholla57
has investigated inter-university web connectivity at a
regional level. Onyancha and Ocholla used link
analysis to compare the performance of Kenyan and
South African universities’ websites. The study found
out that whereas universities in South Africa have
fairly well developed network, inter-connections
between Kenyan universities’ web are few.
Furthermore, it was observed that all the links
between Kenyan and South African universities
emanated from the latter.
At the national level, Bar-Ilan58 carried out a link
130 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., JUNE 2011
analysis of the 8 universities in Israel and reported
that all the universities were interlinked; however,
links between these universities were inserted as web
conventions or indicated reputation more than
research appreciation or research collaboration.
Onyancha and Ocholla59 used link analysis to analyze
the websites of 21 South African universities and the
study revealed that universities in South Africa have a
fairly well developed network with University of
Western Cape (UWC) providing links to the highest
number of universities, followed by Stellenbosh
University, Rhodes University and the University of
Pretoria. Nwagwu and Agarin60 carried out an
exploratory analysis of links to Nigerian universities’
websites using a sample of 1000 pages selected from
30 of Nigeria’s 65 universities. The study revealed
that Nigerian universities’ websites do not interlink,
neither do they link educational websites outside their
country. Self-linking among the individual websites
was found to be a dominant feature.
Objectives of the study

To examine the web interrelationship between the
top ten African and top ten world universities;

To compare the distribution of outlinks and
inlinks among the universities; and

To establish whether the linkage pattern of the
African universities follows their ranking position
as given by Webometrics Ranking of World
Universities in Spain.
Methodology
The study covers the Top Ten African Universities
Table 1—List of top ten world universities and African universities
Rank Top Ten World Universities (TTWU)
University Website
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology www.mit.edu
2 Stanford University www.stanford.edu
3 Harvard University www.harvard.edu
4 Pennsylvania State Univ. www.psu.edu
5 Univ. Of California Berkeley www.berkeley.edu
6 University of Michigan www.umich.edu
7 Univ. Of Wisconsin Madison www.wisc.edu
8 University of Minnesota www.umn.edu
9 Univ. Of Illinois Urbana Champaign www.uiuc.edu
10 Cornell University www.cornell.edu
Source: Cybermetrics Lab http://www.webometrics.info
(TTAU) and Top Ten world Universities (TTWU).
The 20 universities were selected based on January
2008 Webometric Ranking of world universities by
Cybermetrics Lab (Table 1). It should however be
mentioned that the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
University is actually the eleventh in the ranking of
African universities, while University De La Reunion
is the tenth. The choice of the former as the tenth
African university is borne out of the fact that
University De La Reunion although classified under
Africa is actually located in France. Also, South
African universities dominate the Top Ten African
Universities and universities in United States of
America dominate the Top Ten World Universities.
The study examined inlinks to and outlinks from these
African universities to the Top Ten World
Universities.
Data used for this study were extracted from WWW
archives, using the AltaVista commercial search
engine to retrieve records of web link
interconnectivity between the selected universities.
The search engine was selected based on its suitability
compared to other search engines61. Previous results
indicate that AltaVista has become more reliable as a
data source at least for the academic web as it has
been shown to have a good coverage of university
web sites62-64. Thelwall65 discovered that despite the
partial search engine coverage of the web, AltaVista
did appear to cover UK academic sites, on average,
better than a purpose built crawler.
In extracting outlinks from the Top Ten African
Universities to the Top Ten World Universities, the
Boolean search statement (linkdomain:xxx.yyy/ AND
domain:bbb.cc.dd/ was used. The syntax; xxx
Top Ten African Universities (TTAU)
University Website
University of Cape Town www.uct.ac.za
Rhodes University www.ru.ac.za
Stellenbosch University www.sun.ac.za
University of Pretoria www.up.ac.za
Univ. of the Witwatersrand www.wits.ac.za
Univ. of the Western Cape www.uwc.ac.za
University of South Africa www.unisa.ac.za
Univ. of Kwazulu Natal www.ukzn.ac.za
American Univ. in Cairo www.aucegypt.edu
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University www.nmmu.ac.za
 ADEKANNBI: WEB LINK ANALYSIS OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOP TEN AFRICAN & WORLD UNIVERSITIES 131

represents the domain name of the university
receiving the link (e.g. harvard for Harvard
University), yyy represents the sub-top level domain
(e.g. edu), bbb represents the domain name of the
university sending the link, (e.g. uct for University of
Cape Town), cc represents the sub-top level domain
for bbb (e.g. .ac) while dd represents the top level
domain (e.g. .za for South Africa). Hence, the
Boolean search statement used to retrieve links
received by Harvard University from the University
of Cape Town in South Africa was
(linkdomain:harvard.edu/ AND domain:uct.ac.za/).
Conversely, the Boolean search statement
(linkdomain:bbb.cc.dd / AND domain: xxx.yyy/) was
used in extracting inlinks to the Top Ten African
Universities from the Top Ten World Universities.
All the data used were downloaded on the same day
on 21st April 2008. The study did not restrict the
period of linking and search was restricted to HTML
pages. The queries used returned a total hit of 7,645
links out of which, only 4,789 were accessible; 3,531
outlinks and 1,258 inlinks. Reason for inaccessibility
was basically denial of permission to access such
links. Subsequently, the proportional to size sampling
technique was used to determine the number of links
that were selected for the study. A sample size of 50
percent was used resulting to 2,395 links; 1,766
outlinks and 629 inlinks. Using systematic sampling,
individual links were selected based on every third
link.
Using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences
(SPSS) software, descriptive statistical tools,
specifically, the frequency distribution and
percentages were used to determine the proportion of
outlinks and inlinks between the TTAU and the
TTWU.
Results
Distribution of links
Findings showed that while the TTWU received
considerably high number of links from the TTAU.
This was not reciprocated by the TTWU as the
African universities generated very low number of
links from them (Tables 2 and 3).
The University of Cape Town had the highest number
of outlinks followed by Stellenbosch University;
while Massachusetts Institute of Technology received
the highest number of links from the TTAU, also
followed by University of California Berkeley.
The highest number of inlinks to the TTAU was also
observed for University of Cape Town but followed
by University of Witwatersrand. However, unlike in
outlinks, the highest number of links to the TTAU

Table 2—Distribution of outlinks from the Top Ten African Universities to the Top Ten World Universities
MIT SU HU PSU UCB UM UWM UMN UIUC CU TOTAL

UCT 74 65 109 23 57 40 95 19 30 45 557

RU 21 19 9 6 19 8 13 11 9 10 125
SUN 238 18 6 42 13 44 9 4 15 10 399
PU 23 9 9 23 27 9 12 8 16 28 164
WITS 14 14 15 12 13 8 6 69 5 8 164
UWC 4 3 7 1 10 8 2 2 5 3 45
UNISA 8 15 8 4 14 6 25 3 10 2 95
UKZN 3 8 3 1 36 1 4 2 4 3 65
AMUC 98 7 7 2 7 5 7 4 4 8 149
NMMU - 1 1 - 1 - - - - - 3
TOTAL 483 159 174 114 197 129 173 122 98 117 1766
UCT: University of Cape Town; RU: Rhodes University; SUN: Stellenbosch University; UP: University of Pretoria; WITS: University
of Witwatersrand; UWC: University of Western Cape; UNISA: University of South Africa; UKZN: University of Kwazulu Natal;
AMUC: American University in Cairo; NMMU: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University; MIT: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; SU: Stanford University; HU: Harvard University; PSU: Pennsylvania State University; UCB: University of California
Berkeley; UM: University of Michigan; UWM: University of Wisconsin Madison; UMN: University of Minnesota; UIUC: University
of Illinois Urbana Champaign; CU: Cornell University
132 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., JUNE 2011

Table 3—Distribution of inlinks to the Top Ten African Universities from the Top Ten World Universities
MIT SU HU PSU UCB UM UWM UMN UIUC CU TOTAL
UCT 10 44 11 9 16 32 25 13 24 23 207
RU 5 19 3 2 11 10 7 5 7 6 75
SUN 7 9 4 2 6 2 3 1 4 2 40
PU 11 11 2 9 5 3 4 13 10 4 72
WITS 2 24 13 17 5 8 16 12 5 8 110
UWC 1 10 4 3 4 1 3 1 5 2 34
UNISA 2 10 2 2 3 2 4 1 1 - 27
UKZN 1 7 2 - 1 1 1 1 1 1 16
AMUC 1 3 5 3 3 12 6 6 2 4 45
NMMU - - 1 - 1 - - - 1 - 3
TOTAL 40 137 47 47 55 71 69 53 60 50 629
UCT: University of Cape Town; RU: Rhodes University; SUN: Stellenbosch University; UP: University of Pretoria; WITS: University
of Witwatersrand; UWC: University of Western Cape; UNISA: University of South Africa; UKZN: University of Kwazulu Natal;
AMUC: American University in Cairo; NMMU: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University; MIT: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; SU: Stanford University; HU: Harvard University; PSU: Pennsylvania State University; UCB: University of California
Berkeley; UM: University of Michigan; UWM: University of Wisconsin Madison; UMN: University of Minnesota; UIUC: University
of Illinois Urbana Champaign; CU: Cornell University

25

20
Percentage

15 Outlinks
10 Inlinks

5
0
UC
IT

M
SU

HU

UM

CU
U

N
UC
PS

UM
M

UW

UI

Top ten world universities

Fig. 1—Distribution of links – University of Cape Town

came from Stanford University,
University of Michigan (Table 3).
Data characteristics by university
The study examined link relationship of each of the
TTAU with each of the TTWU.
followed by University and University of Wisconsin Madison.
Rather, University of Cape Town received the highest
number of inlinks from Stanford University (21.3%)
and University of Michigan (15.5%).
Rhodes University

University of Cape Town (UCT)

This South Africa’s oldest university, had the highest
number of outlinks and inlinks. Figure 1 shows that
outlinks from UCT to Harvard University (19.6%)
and University of Wisconsin Madison (17.1%) were
highest.
A corresponding number of inlinks was not received
by University of Cape Town from both Harvard
Rhodes University had almost equal number of links
to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (16.8%),
Stanford University (15.2%) and University of
California Berkeley (15.2%). Inlinks from Stanford
University (25.3%) was the highest, followed by
University of California Berkeley (14.7%). Overall,
both Stanford University and University of California
Berkeley featured among the top 3 universities in both
outlinks and inlinks (Figure 2).
 ADEKANNBI: WEB LINK ANALYSIS OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOP TEN AFRICAN & WORLD UNIVERSITIES 133

30
25

Percentage
20
Outlinks
15
Inlinks
10
5
0

UC
B
IT

M
SU

HU

CU
UM
U

N
UC
PS

UM
M

UW

UI
Top ten world universities

Fig. 2— Distribution of links – Rhodes University

70
60
50
Percentage

40 Outlinks
30 Inlinks
20
10
0
MIT SU HU PSU UCB UM UWM UMN UIUC CU
Top ten world universities

Fig. 3— Distribution of links – Stellenbosch University

20

15
Percentage

Outlinks
10
Inlinks

0
MIT SU HU PSU UCB UM UWM UMN UIUC CU
Top ten world universities

Fig. 4 — Distribution of links – University of Pretoria

Stellenbosch University University of Pretoria

Stellenbosch University had about 60 percent of its Cornell University (17.1%) had the highest number of
outlinks to Massachusetts Institute of Technology links from University of Pretoria closely followed by
(Figure 3). The closest was University of Michigan University of California Berkeley (16.5%). However,
with only 11.0 percent. Such a wide margin was University of Pretoria received only 5.6 percent of
however not observed with the inlinks to Stellenbosch links from Cornell University with University of
as the 3 most frequently linked world universities Minnesota (18.1%), Massachusetts Institute of
were Stanford University (22.5%), Massachusetts Technology (15.3%) and Stanford University (15.3%)
Institute of Technology (17.5%) and University of taking the lead with the highest number of inlinks to
California Berkeley (15.0%). University of Pretoria (Figure 4).
134 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., JUNE 2011

University of Witwatersrand (17.8%) and Harvard University (15.6%). Inlinks

The University of Minnesota (42.1%) received the from the top ten world universities were remarkably
highest number of links from University of highest for Stanford University (29.4%) with the
Witwatersrand with the closest institution being closest to it being University of Illinois Urbana
Harvard University with only 9.1 percent (Figure 5). Champaign with 14.7 percent (Figure 6).

Ordinarily, it would have been expected that a

corresponding level of links would be received from
University of Minnesota but only 10.9 percent of links
originated from University of Minnesota to University
of Witwatersrand, Stanford University (21.8%) had
the highest number of links to University of
Witwatersrand.
University of the Western Cape
The highest number of links to University of the
Western Cape were received by University of
California Berkeley (22.2%), University of Michigan
University of South Africa
The University of Wisconsin Madison (26.3%)
received the highest number of links from University
of South Africa, followed by Stanford University
(15.8%). Stanford University (37.0%) however had
the highest number of links to University of South
Africa the closest to it being University of Wisconsin
Madison with 14.8 percent (Figure 7). One would
have expected that the University of South Africa, a
distance learning institution would have generated
more links than the other nine, but the university

Fig. 5—Distribution of links – University of Witwatersrand

Fig. 6—Distribution of links – University of the Western Cape

 ADEKANNBI: WEB LINK ANALYSIS OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOP TEN AFRICAN & WORLD UNIVERSITIES 135

Fig. 7—Distribution of links – University of South Africa

Fig. 8—Distribution of links – University of Kwazulu Natal

generated only 5.4 percent and 4.3 percent of outlinks
and inlinks respectively.
University of Kwazulu Natal
Fifty-five percent of the outlinks from University of
Kwazulu Natal were received by University of
California Berkeley while 43.8 percent of the inlinks
to University of Kwazulu Natal were received from
Stanford University (Figure 8).
American University in Cairo
American University in Cairo, the only non-South
African university and the only private university
among the TTAU consistently maintained the 5th
position in both outlinks and inlinks. Figure 9 shows
that over 65 percent of links were received by
Massachusetts Institute of Technology from American
University in Cairo. Very scanty representations were
observed in the remaining top 9 world universities.
American University in Cairo received 26.7 percent
links from University of Michigan and 13.3 percent
each from University of Wisconsin Madison and
University of Minnesota.
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, the tenth on
Webometrics Ranking had only 6 links in all; 3
outlinks and 3 inlinks. The 3 outlinks were to
Stanford University, Harvard University and
University of California Berkeley. The 3 inlinks were
from Harvard University, University of California
Berkeley and University of Illinois Urbana
Champaign.
136 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., JUNE 2011
Fig. 9—Distribution of links – American University in Cairo
Discussion
The study evidently showed the presence of web
interconnectivity between African universities and the
top world universities. Similar studies have reported
international academic web interconnectivity among
universities66-68. However, analysis of frequency
showed 73.7 percent of outlinks from the TTAU and
26.3 percent of inlinks from the TTWU. According to
Thelwall and Smith69, web links between institutions
can identify patterns of international recognition of
one institution by another and determine information
flow. This can be extrapolated to probably conclude
that African universities show more interest in linking
to the world universities; a relationship that is not
reciprocated by these world universities to African
universities. The low level of links received by the
African universities may probably be partially due to
the fact that African universities in general have
embraced the many features of the WWW only
recently as the study revealed that the relationship
began slowly from 1995 and progressively been
increasing since 2003. The study noted that Stanford
University’s consistency in the frequency of outlinks
and inlinks between the institution and the TTAU.
Specifically, Stanford University, the youngest among
the TTWU, remarkably featured as one of the top four
universities with the highest number of links from
Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University,
University of Witwatersrand, University of South
Africa and University of Kwazulu Natal. More
striking is the position of Stanford University with the
highest number of inlinks to each of the TTAU with
the exception of University of Pretoria and American
University in Cairo.
The positions of the universities in terms of frequency
of links did not follow their ranking positions. While
the position of University of Cape Town as the 1st in
Webometrics ranking was also maintained in its
outlinks and inlinks, the trend was not the same for
others. Generally and in both outlinks and inlinks,
University of Cape Town was not followed by
Rhodes University. The average number of links
generated and received by each of the TTAU did not
follow the ranking as observed in the Webometrics
ranking of these universities. It was however
interesting to observe that University of Cape Town,
Rhodes University, University of Stellenbosch,
University of Pretoria, University of Witwatersrand
and American University in Cairo maintained the 1st –
6th positions generally and in both outlinks and
inlinks, but not in that order. This observation can
partially be said to agree with studies in the UK70-71
and New Zealand72 where Universities with higher
average peer-review ratings attracted more links per
faculty member to their web sites.
Conclusion
Although this study was an exploratory work on link
analysis of websites of the TTAU and the TTWU, its
findings have again proved that ranking of
universities has come to stay and will definitely
continue to shape institutions, educational institutions
inclusive. There is, therefore, the need for African
 ADEKANNBI: WEB LINK ANALYSIS OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOP TEN AFRICAN & WORLD UNIVERSITIES
universities to improve their web presence and
incorporate ranking in their web relationship with
other universities which should significantly be
tailored to benefits that could be received from
academic activities including scholarly
communication, collaboration, and taking part in
cutting edge research among others.
Future studies might focus on understanding the basis
for the link relationships among these universities
investigated.
Acknowledgement
The author wishes to acknowledge Dr. Williams
Nwagwu of Africa Regional Centre for Information
Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, for his input in
this study.
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