Web structure and influence of the Arab universities of the MENA zone (Middle East and North Africa): Visualization and analysis

Purpose – This article aims to display the structure and reveal the web influence of institutions in the MENA zone, in geographic terms (country) and academic terms (universities), by means of their links. Design/methodology/approach – Using search engines and webcrawlers designed to gather information about web links, in conjunction with visualization techniques and degree indicators based on social network analysis, the authors achieved their objective and found responses to a series of pertinent research questions. Findings – There is no direct relationship between the number of university websites and the number of inlinks. Linking between countries in the MENA zone obeys patterns of vicinity and geopolitics. Arab universities are interlinked following trends governed by territorial proximity. There is a strong endogamic tendency, with universities from a single country citing each other, particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia. The authors present the first ranking of web influence in the MENA zone ...