Which Academic Subjects have Most Online Impact

It is known that use of the Web by academic researchers is discipline-dependent and highly variable. Moreover, the Web is increasingly central for sharing information, disseminating results and publicizing research projects and so it is important to find out as much as possible about how it is used, and who is using it successfully. In this pilot study we seek to identify the subjects that have the most impact on the Web, and look for national differences in online subject visibility. We use link counts to identify the highest impact Web sites from the universities in Taiwan and Australia and classify them by domain type and by subject content. The highest impact sites were from computing, but there were major national differences in the impact of engineering and technology sites. Another difference was that Taiwan had more high impact non-academic sites hosted by universities. As a pilot study, the classification process itself was also investigated and the problems of applying subject classification to academic Web sites discussed. The study draws out a number of issues in this regard that do not have simple solutions and point to the need to interpret the results with caution.