Spain's academic web space in the European Higher Education Area: an exploratory approach

Spain's academic web space is diagrammed, together with its relationship with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), with the goal of determining the topology, the outstanding universities, and our standing with respect to other European web spaces. Several co-link maps and network graphs visually represent these relationships among universities and web spaces. The results show that the Spanish network is rather isolated from other European universities, because the out- and inlink percentages are quite low considering the volume of content and the number of Spanish universities. On the other hand, Spain's academic web space is quite cohesive, with a significant nucleus that is strongly interconnected. We conclude that the limited use of the English language and minimal electronic publication of quality research in accessible repositories could explain this isolation. In addition, Spanish universities have a more local than international emphasis.