Under the Webometrics Ranking, universities are assessed in three critical categories of impact, openness and excellence.
The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain.
The main objective of CISC is to promote scientific research as to improve the progress of the scientific and technological level of the country, which will contribute to increase the welfare of the citizens.
CSIC also plays an important role in the formation of new researchers and technicians in the different aspects of the science and the technology. Various players in education sector encourage International, saying it raises the institutions standing on compliance with quality and standards.

Internationally, universities are ranked on five broad parameters–teaching, research, citations, international outlook and industry income.
Universities that observe quality standards raise their chances of being ranked higher in the international scene hence improving their visibility and attractiveness to the students.
The January edition (2021.1.0) is built with the indicators obtained during the month of January 2021 in order to maintain the freshness of the data of the most current and updated Ranking of Universities.

Changes in the calculation of indicators
INDICATORS | MEANING | METHODOLOGY | SOURCE | WEIGHT |
PRESENCE | This indicator has been discontinued | |||
VISIBILITY | Web contents Impact | Number of external networks (subnets) linking to the institution's webpages (normalized and then the maximum value is chosen) | Ahrefs Majestic | 50% |
TRANSPARENCY (or OPENNESS) | Top cited researchers | Number of citations from Top 210 authors (excl. top 20 outliers) | Profiles | 10% |
EXCELLENCE (or SCHOLAR) |
Top cited papers | Number of papers amongst the top 10% most cited in each one of the 26 disciplines of the full database Data for the five year period: 2015-2019 |
Scimago | 40% |
Since 2004, the Ranking Web (or Webometrics Ranking) is published twice a year (data is collected during the first weeks of January and July for being public at the end of both months), covering more than 31,000 Higher Education Institutions worldwide.

Data is collected between 1 and 20 of January or July, depending of the edition.
Final publication is done about the END of January or July, usually not before the 28th.
The Webometrics Rank of a university is strongly linked to the volume and quality of the contents it publishes on the Web.