Websites of ICSSR Research Institutes : An Evaluation

In this digital era, user communities are increasingly becoming more web-savvy and using the new technologies for information communication, sharing, and collaboration which is reflected in users' information seeking behavior. In such a scenario, institutional websites have emerged as an important tool for the dissemination of information and play an important role in information dissemination process. The present study is intended to evaluate the contents and design of websites of 29 ICSSR supported research institutes. The data was collected by survey and observation methods using a checklist and some web analyzer tools. The study shows that Delhi has the highest number of ICSSR research institutes. Nearly half of the ICSSR institutes i.e., 13(44.83%) were providing links to job information/vacancy on their website and Facebook was the most common social media tool used by ICSSR institutes and 16 (55%) research institutes have given Facebook links on their website followed by Twitter- 14(48.28%) and YouTube. The interlinking pattern was very weak among ICSSR research institutes' websites and the Institute of Public Enterprise (IPE) scored the highest 150.1 in website performance in the Nibbler test.