The July edition of Webometrics Ranking places the University of Sarajevo at the 2002nd  position at the global list of 27,000 universities. When it comes to the ranking in Europe – the University of Sarajevo takes the 727th position. unfortunately, the public is under impression that is University scored worse ranking result when compared to the January ranking, when had been placed at  the 1881st place. Namely, this the result of a change in the ranking calculation methodology, so in Cybermetrics - the laboratory performing the collating and processing of data for ranking, they changed the level of criteria so these two results cannot be compared, simply because of the value of individual segments taken into account when doing calculations. Namely, in the January ranking, the presence criterion was 10% of the total value, and in July, this percentage was 5%. In the influence criterion, the percentage remained unchanged (50%), transparency remained with the same values (10%), including the excellence criterion being increased from 30% to 35%, which naturally reflected the very positioning on the July list. Therefore, the January and July rankings must be viewed separately without making comparison, simply because of the change in the criteria.

As stated, the overall order consists of four criteria. On the Webometrics list it is possible to monitor separate criteria rankings. It is especially important to emphasize that in the Presence Rank, the University of Sarajevo takes 408th place out of 27,000 ranked, which indicates that management’s strategy to increase the visibility of the web space of the University of Sarajevo has been successful, and that 30 organizational units, together with the University Administrative Office has made a considerable effort to ensure that the total number of websites included in the University’s main web domain (including all sub-domains and sub-directories) get increase in indexing by Google's largest commercial search engines significantly over the previous periods. For the purpose of illustrating, in January of this year, according to this criterion the University took 1354th place in the overall ranking. Even when conversion is made in relation to the new criterion, there is a visible improvement that is the result of the University's efforts in improving the number of documents available to the public through university web pages. It includes all web pages and all formats individually recognized by Google - both static and dynamic, as well as other files. It is impossible to have a strong presence without the involvement of everyone in the organization, which has proved been to be possible by this improvement even with the limited resources. For comparison, the University of Sarajevo in this category is placed ahead of Universities having the better overall ranking. According to this criterion, we are 719 places ahead of the University of Split - ranked 1098th  in the overall rank, 822 places ahead of the University of Rijeka, which occupies the 1600th place in the overall rankings. When the presence is concerned, the efforts invested in this criterion resulted  in our position  being 140 places ahead of the Imperial College London, which is placed at the 548th position according to this criterion, while being, in the overall rank, the 56th university ranked. By using this criterion, we are sharing the 408th place with the Université du Québec Montréal, leaving behind: Georgetown University, University of California San Francisco, King's College London, Johns Hopkins University.

The impact is the following criterion to consider. For this criterion, the content quality is evaluated through a “virtual referendum”, counting all external links that University's web domain receives from third parties, so-called in-links. These links are recognized as institutional prestige, academic achievement, value of information and the utility of services introduced to websites in accordance with the criteria of millions of web editors from all over the world. The link visibility data was collected from the two most important sources: “Majestic SEO” (www.majesticseo.com) and “ahrefs” (ahrefs.com). The University Telecommunication Center has recently started analyzing these two sources that will result in adopting a strategy of increasing the impact using the data obtained through the analysis for improving the position on the final rank list.

The third criterion is openness, which takes into account the number of our tutors and associates getting quoted on Google Scholar. In this segment, the University has made additional efforts to index all teachers and associates listed at the Google Scholar, which led to leap in over 400 places in comparison to January screening at the TRANSPARENT RANKING list: Top Universities by Google Scholar Citations. This jump is the result of intense work in the previous nine months and the determination of management to make the results of all teachers work to the more visible world audience.

The fourth criterion is thee excellence, including here academic papers published in influential international journals. The mere use of the total number of works can be misleading, so Webometrics has limited the indicators to just excellent publications, or just evaluating the university's scientific production, among the 10% of the most talented papers in their science fields. These Webometrics indicators are taken from the SCIMAGO Group. For the July ranking, Webometrics used data from the 2011-2015 period. This indicates that the current University of Sarajevo’s efforts will only be visible in two to three years, and it opens up the issue of funding top-level scientific works whose results can be indexed into aggregates collecting data for 10% of the most outstanding in 26 areas.

From the foregoing, it is quite apparent that the University of Sarajevo is committed to expanding the visibility of its electronic environment as well as the visibility of the scientific output through Google Scholar. It is also indicated that these two criteria made a significant leap compared to January ranking. Influencing factors are the next challenge certainly implying an increase in funding and publication of top scientific results. Also, ranking data must be read with due care. All its components as a whole provide full image that can define the strategic moves that must be made.


University of Sarajevo Administrative Office