Websites of Nuclear Research Institutes of IAEA Member Countries:A Study of their Status

This paper aims to investigate the visibility, the Web Impact Factor (WIF), the relative WIF (RWIF) and the collaboration rate of the websites of nuclear research institutes of IAEA member countries via webometrics.Design/Methodology/Approach: The study included 103 websites of research institutes representing 42 IAEA member countries. The data was collected in two phases: Firstly, using the AltaVista directory, all of the investigated research institute websites were retrieved and stored on a PC; and then the various links of the websites were extracted and analyzed. The website of the French National Centre for Scientific Research had the highest visibility and the website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan had the least visibility. Websites of the LAN and Fermilab centers in USA had, respectively, the highest and lowest WIF and RWIF. 16 websites were selected as core websitesResearch limitations: The variability of search engine results and the unavailability of the websites of some research institutes were limitations to the study. the visibility of the studied websites was low; this may be due to factors such as language, the amount of information presented in relation to the needs of special users, up-to-date-ness of the information, accessibility, and the possibility to interact with researchers. A high percentage of the studied websites had low WIFs and RWIFs and this may be a result of the quality and quantity of the information they presented.