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My university has signed a cooperation agreement with a different university overseas, and we are encouraged to find potential collaborators in that university. I looked at the university's website, but could not find an easily searchable index of the faculty members by their research topics (I can go to the homepage of each and every faculty member and check, but they are very many).

Is there a way to do such a search in a tool such as Google Scholar? In particular, can I search in Google Scholar for papers with certain keywords, with the constraint that one of the authors should have a specific affiliation? Such a search could lead me to a very focused list of potential collaborators.

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    Hmm, would you take commercial services like "Web of Science" into account? Perhaps they have more search options?
    – DCTLib
    Jan 26, 2020 at 11:37
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    Long term, find a way to visit. Or to attend conferences where faculty from the other university are likely to attend, say by presenting. Set up a meeting at the conference with all such faculty (both universities) invited.
    – Buffy
    Jan 26, 2020 at 12:18
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    May I suggest that you direct a concern to the cooperation office of your university, so that its officials may become aware of this challenge? Jan 27, 2020 at 5:06

4 Answers 4

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Web of Science can do this to some extent.

  1. Go to Web of Science and search the keyword in "topic".
  2. After getting results, refine by funding agencies and look for the institution you want.

I'm not sure how comprehensive this is, though.

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  • Thanks! But I had to refine by "Organization" rather than funding agency. Jan 26, 2020 at 13:57
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There are likely not all that many departments at the other university where possible collaborators could be located. Assuming they are in a part of the world where departments and people have websites, go to the website of the possible departments, and then the websites of faculty in that department. This way, you are not limited by the vagaries of having to find the right keywords to search, but instead get an overview of what people in that department do -- and maybe find someone who is not doing exactly what you are doing but instead could use the knowledge you have because they don't already have it themselves.

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    ‎ I tried this, but after filtering by department, there are still 100s of different faculty members to search.. Jan 26, 2020 at 16:33
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    @ErelSegal-Halevi, contact one (or a few) of the likelier ones, and ask them to put you in contact with potential collaborators.
    – vonbrand
    Jan 27, 2020 at 0:25
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It sounds quite strange to sign collaboration agreements without any feeling of what is going on on the other site. Get the text of the agreements. Presumably some discussions on potential collaboration areas were part of the negotiations, contacting the people signing the agreement (and/or the people involved in negotiations) would be the first step. First locally, then (probably through them) their counterparts.

Contact the chairmen of the possible departments over there, they should be the most interested in getting the collaboration go forward. They should be able (and interested) in putting you in contact with potential counterparts.

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I think "being on the ground" makes it really easy to find the right collaborator! Find whoever runs a seminar series in the appropriate department (i.e. you're in math, look for an appropriate math seminar) that you'll want to visit and would be interested in giving a seminar talk. Most people will enjoy the ease in planning something that plans itself. Make sure the talk gets advertised to the right other departments, and try to talk to people when you're there. There's a very good chance that whoever is interested in your work will make it to your talk. Otherwise, someone in the audience will tell you who you need to talk to, and you can probably meet them that day and well, it all starts there.

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