New informetric aspects of the Internet: some reflections - many problems

Abstract

This paper poses more problems than it solves: it investigates the new (virtual) world of the Internet and the challenges that it offers for informetric analysis. The paper studies five different aspects. First of all, there is the increasing problem of data gathering in the Internet. The second topic is the Internet version of the informetric laws: are the same types of classical distributions valid or not? The third topic deals with scientometric aspects: can the clickable buttons (hyperlinks) in Web pages replace the role of classical references in scientific papers? It also contains a study of the Web impact factor and a discussion on ageing. The fourth topic discusses information retrieval (IR) aspects of search engines. It studies aspects of probabilistic IR as applied in these engines and poses the question of quantitative evaluation of IR (Web analogues of recall and precision). Lastly, aspects of complexity are discussed. The fractal nature of the Internet is highlighted and a modest attempt to measure it is given.