  This study explores the societal embeddedness of the websites of research
projects. It combines two aims: characterizing research projects based on their
weblink relationships, and discovering external societal actors that relate to
the projects via weblinks. The study was based on a set of 121 EU-funded
research projects and their websites. Domains referring to the websites of the
research projects were collected and used in visualizations of co-link
relationships. These analyses revealed clusters of topical similarity among the
research projects as well as among referring entities. Furthermore, a first
step into unveiling potentially relevant stakeholders around research projects
was made. Weblink analysis is discussed as an insightful tool for monitoring
the internal and external linkages of research projects, representing a
relevant application of webometric methods.
