Effect of faculty on research cooperation and publication: Employing natural language processing

This study continues a series of studies on the effectiveness of scientific conferences. This topic has not been sufficiently investigated although it receives large funds, assuming that these conferences have added value for staff members' academic-professional development. Predicated on questionnaires filled by 96 academic staff members from 17 different departments, we found that when choosing conferences to attend, the type of faculty affect the search for cooperation. Moreover, staff members from the Faculty of Natural Sciences attribute more significance to conferences that result in publications than staff members from the Faculty of Health. The Faculty of Engineering creates negative mediation in the correlation between gender and cooperation. Namely, the Faculty of Engineering does not urge cooperation and even has a negative effect, but its effect is evident mainly among men. This finding complements prior research findings showing that women are more inclined to cooperation (Eckhaus & Davidovitch, 2018a). The current findings show that the inclination to cooperation is not related only to gender issues rather the faculty has an effect as well. The current findings might have a contribution to the significance of the faculty as an influential factor of conferences on cooperation – and in fact on the professional development of staff members.