Co-link analysis as a monitoring tool: A webometric use case to map the web relationships of research projects

This study explores the societal embeddedness of the websites of research projects. It combines two aims: characterizing research projects based on their weblink relationships, and discovering external societal actors that relate to the projects via weblinks. The study was based on a set of 121 EU-funded research projects and their websites. Domains referring to the websites of the research projects were collected and used in visualizations of co-link relationships. These analyses revealed clusters of topical similarity among the research projects as well as among referring entities. Furthermore, a first step into unveiling potentially relevant stakeholders around research projects was made. Weblink analysis is discussed as an insightful tool for monitoring the internal and external linkages of research projects, representing a relevant application of webometric methods.