At the end of July 2016 the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities was released once more, published by the leading Spanish research group, Cybermetrics Lab. The rating measures how a particular university is represented in the global internet space. The number of Project 5-100 participating universities in the published ratings has increased once again. In July 2015, only 3 participating universities were in the top 100, in January 2016 - 4, and in July – 5. The best indicator was shown by the Higher School of Economics, taking 711th place. Next was Novosibirsk State University (722th place), National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (901st place), ITMO University (905th place), and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (921st place). Besides the universities mentioned above, 16 more Project 5-100 universities were represented in the published ratings.
Since January 2016, more than half of participating universities of Project 5-100, to one degree or another, have improved their position in the Webometrics rating. The largest rating growth for the last half-year belongs to South Ural State University (+1496 places), Far East Federal University (+983), the Higher School of Economics (+700) and MISIS National University of Science and Technology (+529).
The best among Russian universities were Moscow State University, taking 186th place, and Saint Petersburg State University (557th place).
The Webometrics rating is released twice a year at the end of January and July. Around 25000 universities from around the world are ranked in total. The published ratings always include the top 12000 universities. Its methodology is based on four indicators with varying weights: visibility – number of external incoming links; size – number of webpages indexed by Google; superiority – citation of scientific publications based on the analytical data of the SCImago research group; and exposure or transparency – and indicator using information from university profiles on Google Scholar citations.