About Us

The Institute for Web Science and Technologies (WeST) was founded in October 2009 at the University of Koblenz and investigates the World Wide Web as the most important IT infrastructure of the 21st century. We examine the technical aspects of the Web being an open, global and networked system. Moreover, we understand the Web as a socio-technical system and believe that its functioning crucially depends on social, economic and governmental processes. Web Science is the new subject that targets the interdisciplinary understanding and further development of this complex dynamic system.

Fruitful interdisciplinary activities have been initiated at all levels including joint research projects with political scientists from the Campus Landau, joint teaching with colleagues from sociology and an enrichment of technically oriented topic groups at the Institute WeST, i.e. Web Retrieval, Semantic Web, Interactive Web and Software Web by the new initiative of Jun.-Prof. Dr. Mario Schaarschmidt towards Web Science and Management. A strengthened cooperation between the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences, GESIS, and the Institute for Business Informatics has led to a new professorship "Web Science": Prof. Dr. Markus Strohmaier now enriches current research activities and knots further ties with the social science domain at GESIS.

Centre of Web Science Education

Since winter term 2012/2013, the faculty of computer science offers a novel Master’s programme in Web Science. Courses startet in October 2012. The interdisciplinary curriculum emphasises computer science and builds bridges to social sciences, economics, studies of the law, linguistics and mathematics.

On our Master's in Web Science information web page you will find further information on the contents, requirements and application process.

Centre of Web Science Research

In its numerous and most often international research projects the Institute WeST investigates empirical data and develops methods to build a sound foundation for Web Science and for applications of Web technologies. To this end, WeST also participates in two international networks of excellence, WSTNet and Net2. From 2004 to 2012, WeST received 12.8 Million Euros in third-party funding. Many ideas are generated at scientific conferences, many relevant of which are actually co-organized by WeST including Informatik 2013, the World Wide Web Conference 2012, the Int. Semantic Web Conference 2011, the WebSci '11 and Int. Semantic Web Conference 2015, as well as seminars such as the European Summer School on Information Retrieval 2011 or the Summer Academy on Web Science.