Wikiometrics: A Wikipedia Based Ranking System

TL;DR

This paper introduces Wikiometrics, a novel Wikipedia-based ranking system that derives metrics from content, structure, and user interactions to rank universities and journals effectively, offering a transparent alternative to traditional expert rankings.

Contribution

The paper presents an innovative mining methodology using Wikipedia data to generate rankings, demonstrating its effectiveness on real-world university and journal rankings, with high correlation to established benchmarks.

Findings

High correlation with existing rankings

Uses publicly available Wikipedia data

Effective for ranking universities and journals

Abstract

We present a new concept - Wikiometrics - the derivation of metrics and indicators from Wikipedia. Wikipedia provides an accurate representation of the real world due to its size, structure, editing policy and popularity. We demonstrate an innovative mining methodology, where different elements of Wikipedia - content, structure, editorial actions and reader reviews - are used to rank items in a manner which is by no means inferior to rankings produced by experts or other methods. We test our proposed method by applying it to two real-world ranking problems: top world universities and academic journals. Our proposed ranking methods were compared to leading and widely accepted benchmarks, and were found to be extremely correlative but with the advantage of the data being publically available.