Longitudinal Trends in Academic Web Links
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0165551507079417
  access restricted (by the publisher) to members/subscribers/customers only
  peer-reviewed

Payne, Nigel and Mike Thelwall
Journal of Information Science
2008

Abstract:

Longitudinal studies of web change are needed to assess the stability of webometric statistics and this paper forms part of an on-going longitudinal study of three national academic web spaces. It examines the relationship between university inlinks and research productivity over time and identifies reasons for individual universities experiencing significant increases and decreases in inlinks over the last six years. The findings also indicate that between 66 and 70% of outlinks remain the same year on year for all three academic web spaces, although this stability conceals large individual differences. Moreover, there is evidence of a level of stability over time for university site inlinks when measured against research productivity. Surprisingly, however, inlink counts can vary significantly from year to year for individual universities, for reasons unrelated to research which undermines their use in webometrics studies.