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Webometrics measures the impact of worldwide university websites.

Visualization of indicators and social networks with graphic interfacing is another of the measurement indicators.

The main purpose of the ranking is to promote academic web publications.

UNal has the largest amount of quotes on the Colombian beta researchers ranking in Google Scholar.

The World University website rankings is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Laboratory of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, for its Spanish acronym), one of the largest research centers in Spain. 

In Latin America UNal is ranked 15^th after universities of Brazil, Chile and Argentina. While in Colombia it is ranked in 1^st place followed by the Universidad de los Andes, the Universidad de Antioquia, the Universidad Javeriana and the Universidad del Valle. 

This university web of metrics provides the most complete and current world ranking of universities. This metric includes more than 21,000 universities in two yearly editions, one in January and the other in July. 

The main purpose of the ranking is to promote academic web presence, supporting Open Access initiatives for significantly increasing the transfer of scientific and cultural knowledge produced by the universities to the society as a whole. 

The objective is not to evaluate websites, their design, usability or the popularity of their content according to the amount of visits or visitors. Web indicators are considered as proxies in the correct, comprehensive, deep evaluation of the university global performance, taking into account its activities and outputs and their relevance and impact. 

The scientific activity of universities on the web has been studied through cybermetric indicators which may be used to evaluate science and technology. 

The specific research includes among others, development of web indicators applied to Spanish, European, Ibero American and world R&D scenarios; qualitative studies on scientific communication through electronic journals and document repositories and impact of Open Access initiatives; development of indicators on information society content; display of indicators and social networks with user-friendly dynamic and interactive graphic interfaces; design and evaluation of document analysis of web resources techniques; gender studies applied to web academic activity; development of cybermetric techniques applied to search engine positioning and lastly consumer information through web data mining. 

For UNal-Manizales Deputy Rector Germán Albeiro Castaño Duque, these results show the strengths the institution has in R&D topics. “This impels us to continue working and improve in all aspects because UNal strives for academic excellence and contribute to the Colombia as a state.” 

Researchers also at the forefront 

The UNal Research System highlighted that UNal has the largest amount of quotes on the Colombian beta researchers ranking in Google Scholar, including professors such as Diego Milanés, Roberto Martínez, Fabio González, Fleming Martínez, Germán Poveda, Sonia Moreno and Eduardo Pizarro. 

In this list of the top 50 Colombian researchers there are 13 are from UNal, 8 from the Universidad de los Andes, 4 from the Universidad Industrial de Santander and Universidad Javeriana, and 3 from the Universidad del Valle. In the public institution category, the Universidad de Antioquia holds second place.