Publication Activity, Media Presence and Company Links of Russian Northwestern Universities: A Webometric Study

Russian higher education system is undergoing transformation with multiple government policies introduced to increase performance of universities. Bibliometric approaches are used to build many indicators of universities performance, but they are criticized for ignoring many aspects of universities activity. Webometrics is an alternative approach that can take into account the different activities of universities. However, in their current state, they are also targeted mostly to ranking purposes. In this paper, new approaches to webometric analysis of Russian Northwestern universities are developed. They are taking into account the context of their embeddedness as shown in media and via business links using Social Network Analysis and Text Mining. This helps to reveal different structural positions of universities which could be described within the framework of the contemporary development of the Locals and Cosmopolitans concept. Key words: webometrics, Russian universities, bibliometrics, social network analysis, topic modeling