This is the metadata file for the cleaned and formatted network data from the results of hyperlink web-scraping of websites belonging to organizations listed as working within the NYC borough of Staten Island in the 2017 NYC Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) (USDA 2017). 1. Outline. This metadata file contains the following sections: - description of data - key words - date of last update - data dictionary - references 2. Description of data. The data represent the cleaned and formatted network data from the results of hyperlink web-scraping of a purposefully selected, geographically bounded selection of environmental stewardship organizations (USDA 2017), which are documented and explained elsewhere (see "NYC Staten Island STEW-MAP hyperlink webscrape_Metadata.txt"). This data set is formatted as a standard edge-array (node1, node2, edge attribute) for network analysis. The analysis of hyperlink network data almost always involves a significant level of data cleaning, re-coding, and consolidation (Ackland 2010, Elgin 2015). We reduced the total hyperlink data (n = 46,366 URLs) to root URLs, as has been done elsewhere (Elgin 2015); it would not make sense, for example, for one of our search links to have multiple network connections to an external site’s “home,” “about,” and “partners” pages. We further removed links to social media, which show different but complementary information from hyperlink networks (Hayes and Scott 2018), and removed links to images, file storage, web-services, audio files, and any other content that did not represent an organization, as well as news media, which illustrates information distribution, but not necessarily inter-organizational connections. Following Kreakie et al. (2016), we manually checked all URLs and consolidated them when two different root URLs represented the same organization. For example, an organization might have a dedicated website, with a unique URL, to communicate its environmental management plan. We did not further modify root URLs from potentially related units, such as two academic units within a university (e.g., www.gc.cuny.edu and www.guttman.cuny.edu). Such consolidations should be guided by case specific information and the research questions at hand (Elgin 2015). Using the root URLs as reported (with the aforementioned cleaning) is suitable for testing network structure against search depth since our questions and analyses are largely methodological; however, testing specific hypotheses about organizational types and interactions might warrant further refinement of these units (Elgin 2015). Once cleaned, we assigned a value to all URL pairs (called edges in network vocabulary) for the depth at which they were found. We removed all duplicate edges, retaining only the first instance and depth value. This yielded a network of 2,238 nodes (i.e., URLs), which we further reduced to a core network of 270 nodes by removing all nodes with a total degree of one (i.e., they were only connected to a single scraped site). The core network focuses the analysis on prominent websites in the network. The reduced network left five search URLs as isolates, or nodes without any edges, which we retained. 3. Key words. Social network analysis, SNA, hyperlink networks, web-scraping, environmental governance, decision support tools, environmental stewardship 4. Date of last update. 26 April 2022 5. Data dictionary. The following are column names in the data set and their definitions. searchurl_cleaned: The URL that was used to initiate the scrape of a given site. The search URLs have been cleaned and formatted, for example, by removing "http" or trailing back-slashes, to ensure consistency among all instances of the search URL in the dataset. This column is equivalent to "node1" or "ego" in a standard network data edgelist. root_with_recodes: The reduced root URL, including instances where it was receded, as described above. This column is equivalent to "node2" or "alter" in a standard network data edgelist. depth: the search depth at which the dyad between the URL pairs was found. Search depth can be thought of as the fewest number of clicks a user must navigate through in a website to arrive at a given sub-page within that website. Depth starts at one and each click is an additional depth. 6. References Ackland, R. (2010). WWW Hyperlink Networks. In D. Hansen, B. Shneiderman, & M. Smith (Eds.), Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world. Morgan-Kaufmann. Elgin, D. J. (2015). Utilizing hyperlink network analysis to examine climate change supporters and opponents. Review of Policy Research, 32(2), 226–245. https://doi.org/10.1111/ropr.12118 Hayes, A. L., & Scott, T. A. (2018). Multiplex Network Analysis for Complex Governance Systems Using Surveys and Online Behavior. Policy Studies Journal, 46(2), 327–353. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12210 Kreakie, B. J., Hychka, K. C., Belaire, J. A., Minor, E., & Walker, H. A. (2016). Internet-Based Approaches to Building Stakeholder Networks for Conservation and Natural Resource Management. Environmental Management, 57(2), 345–354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0624-8 USDA Forest Service. (2017). Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP). New York City Data Set. Available online at https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/STEW-MAP/data/.