UCT is the only African university listed in the 2009 Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, coming in at position number 360 out of the top 500.

Launched in 2004 and updated every six months, Webometrics is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain.

According to their website, Webometrics is intended "to provide extra motivation to researchers worldwide for publishing more and better scientific content on the Web, making it available to colleagues and people wherever they are located."

Some 16 000 higher education institutions are listed in the directory.

CSIC also plays an important role in the formation of new researchers and technicians in the different aspects of science and technology.

Webometrics uses quantitative methods of analysis and applied indicators to measure the scientific activity on the Web.

"The goal of the project is to convince academic and political communities of the importance of web publication, not only for dissemination of academic knowledge but for measuring scientific activities, performance and impact too," says the CSIC.

Factors used to determine placement on the Webometrics ranking include:

The number of external inlinks and the number of pages of the website; the number of pages recovered from four major search engines; the number of relevant files available online in other formats, such as Microsoft Office documents and Adobe Acrobat files, and the number of papers and citations for each academic domain.

UCT scored especially high in number of web pages and academic papers available.

Top of the list was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.